


Bang Bang, That Awful Sound

by jellybeanforest



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, Barely Parent Thanos, But at least Yondu is trying (mostly), Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, Darkfic, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Good Intentions But Terrible Execution, Hookers Teaching Life Lessons, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scenes, Parent Yondu Udonta, Pelvic Sorcery, Prostitution, Ravager-Typical Childhood, Reluctant Parent Kraglin, Sex Talk, Sisterly bonding, Starmora, Terrible Intentions And Competent Execution, Threats of Cannibalism, Underage Sex (USA Standards), Weaponized Sex, Yondad, dadYondu, kragdu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest
Summary: Peter and Gamora were raised by violent homicidal assholes. When puberty hits, Yondu and Thanos still need to give their respective adoptive children the sex talk. The effects of that day ripple into their present-day relationship.





	1. Seasons Came and Changed the Time

**Author's Note:**

> This was loosely inspired by a prompt for LJ GotG Kinkmeme in which Thanos gives “the talk” to Gamora and Nebula and warns them off sex by invoking the term “Pelvic Sorcery.” What was supposed to be a quick comedic oneshot where the Guardians receive the sex talk from their parental figures turned into a longer story about the meaning of family, love, and how past traumas affect the present.
> 
> All Chapter Titles will be from “Bang Bang” by Cher.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yondu gives Peter the sex talk, or rather tries to get out of doing it personally any way he can.

On the day of Peter’s birth, Meredith Quill cradles her baby son. She promises him a life of sunlight, music, and most importantly, love. Peter’s first word is “Mama,” but his second is not “Dada,” which is unsurprising considering he has never met the man.

“He is an angel,” his mother tells him, “a spaceman from heaven.” 

“He was a conman,” his grandfather tells her when he thinks Peter is upstairs sleeping, “a man who ran when he got you pregnant.”

Peter doesn’t know who to believe when adults can’t agree, so he believes both. His daddy is a space conman.

When Peter is older, Mer makes sandwiches, and they walk to the park with the giant oak tree, the one with the good climbing branches. She shows him the spot where she and his daddy carved their initials in the bark years before, back when she was young and so in love. Now, not quite as young but still in love, she shares her Walkman with their child, singing of idealized romance and better days ahead.

“Mommy, what’s love?” Peter asks her.

Mer sweeps him up, spinning him into the air. Peter laughs, giddy and breathless, at the swift weightless feeling, fully trusting his mother to hold on and catch him before he can fall.

“This. This is love, baby,” she tells him before encapsulating him in a tight hug.

“And so is this. You feel it?” She pulls back and taps his heart. “Right there, that’s love. One day, you’ll find someone that makes you feel exactly like that.”

Three years later, his mother is dead, and in the wake of that loss, the Ravagers kidnap him. He meets their leader, Captain Yondu Udonta, the swearing, swaggering asshole of a pirate.

“Are you my dad?” Peter asks him days later when he works up the nerve to voice the question. Mom had never mentioned his father was blue, which seems like a big detail to omit. Yet, here he stood: a space conman who picked him up immediately after his mother’s death, just like she said his father would.

“Hell no, boy. Do I look like yer daddy to you?” Yondu blusters in surprise. Of all the stupid things the little bastard had asked, that one was the most foolish. Yondu briefly wonders if the kid is colorblind or just plain stupid.

“Mom said my dad would come for me,” Peter tilts his head to look at Yondu, as if the change in perspective would alter the obvious differences between them.

“Don’t know nothin’ ‘bout yer mom, kid. We was just passin’ through and wanted a snack. My boys ain’t never tasted Terran before.”

That shuts up Peter for the day.

 

* * *

 

**Five-ish Years Later**

Yondu and his crew are at a brothel, enjoying the spoils of their most recent job, when the captain spots Peter in the corner trying to chat up a buxom Shi’ar woman. From her crossed arms and the rather severe look she’s giving the kid, it’s obviously not going well.

“Quill! What the fuck are ya doin’ here? Git out! Adults only!” Yondu crosses the room and gets right up into his face.

“I’m old enough,” Peter insists. Yondu glares level into the boy’s eyes. Since when had the boy gotten so tall and greasy, and is that peach fuzz thickening into a mustache on his upper lip?

“Maybe I’ll believe that when you finally grow into them shovels ya call hands.” He says as he roughly marches the boy back to the Eclector, gripping his arm so tightly he leaves bruises. Yondu had been looking forward to a night of drink and debauchery before Quill had to ruin it with his presence. Obviously, it had been a mistake showing Quill how to pick locks and bypass security scanners. If Yondu hadn’t been so pissed, he may have even been a little proud of the kid.

Once Quill is again secure in his room, Yondu ponders how long it’s been since they picked up the brat. Any extended period of time spent with him felt like decades, but he thinks it’s realistically only been a few years. How old had Quill been when they picked him up anyways? For all Yondu knew, the boy was older than him but that still translated to dependent child in his culture. How did Terran aging work exactly… or Celestial aging for that matter? Quill’s mother had died when he was little more than a squalling baby. Yondu hadn’t paid too much attention to the cause of death, but what if it had been old age?

Oh shit. Was Quill fifty? Would Yondu die before Quill could reasonably be expected to take care of himself? Yondu immediately abandons that train of thought. If the boy was aging that slow, he’d still be a small brat unable to see eye to eye with Yondu. He doesn’t even want to consider whether Peter will grow to be the same size as his father.

Regardless of the pace of physical maturity, it was an undeniable forward-moving trend. Before it got too far, there were certain _lessons_ he would have to impart. Well, maybe not him personally. One of the perks of captaincy is its primary responsibility: Delegation.

Unfortunately, there are few on the Eclector he could trust to actually give the boy accurate and useful information that wouldn’t lead to his molestation or subsequent death. He pictures Horuz explaining how he thought it would be funny to tell Quill the way to a Kree’s heart is through an enthusiastic ass-grabbing, and it would be funny, fucking hilarious really, for about five seconds until Yondu whistled the man through his eye socket. Then, he’d be out a trusted Ravager, which is harder to come by these days. It’s all fun and games until the Terran loses his dick after all.

Really, there was only one person he could trust not to fuck up too much.

 

**Plan A: Transfer Responsibility to his First Mate**

Unfortunately, his regular “thing” with Kraglin complicated matters, especially when it came to Quill. Kraglin had been against the idea of keeping him, didn’t even want to pick him up in the first place. He had insisted on certain _conditions_ regarding the boy’s tenure, conditions Yondu now regrets agreeing to, but negotiations are always difficult without the aid of his arrow. He had to get Kraglin into a really good mood before he sprung this request on him. Good thing that wasn’t the only thing he planned on getting sprung that night.

“You left early, sir. Was waitin’ fer ya to come back,” Kraglin says when he stumbles in later that night, horny but only slightly tipsy from the brothel.

Yondu notices Kraglin has on one of his stupid, sentimental grins. Perfect. Let the seduction begin.

“Quill was bein’ a fuckin’ idjit. Now shuddap an’ c’mere,” Yondu always knew how to sweet talk Kraglin out of his pants.

 

* * *

 

“The boy’s gettin’ awful big,” Yondu observes to Kraglin as they lay in bed afterwards.

“Hrm… I guess so,” Kraglin replies. The kid seemed roughly the same to him, just a bit longer in the leg and with a weird whistly-crack to his voice Kraglin found endlessly amusing.

“You think he’s almost done growin’?” Yondu keeps his voice casual.

“Prob’ly. Terrans weren’t giants last we was there,” Kraglin answers. It had been a while, but the sparse structures dotting the Mi-ser-y landscape seemed to have been built to fit standard-sized humanoids. He yawns. Why are they talking about Pete anyways when he’s trying to enjoy this post-orgasmic cloud?

“Somethin’ must be done,” Yondu hints. It’s not going to be an easy sell, but he’s quickly going over the pitch in his head, the one he practiced in the mirror before Kraglin’s arrival. Kraglin barely tolerates Quill, but he is relaxed and unusually compliant right now. Yondu made sure of that. Someone needs to talk to the boy about puberty and sex. Who better than a person who is somewhat physically-similar to the Terran? Someone like–

“Ya want me to take care of it?” Kraglin offers with no resistance.

That’s surprising. Yondu hesitates only a moment before giving him a short nod. Something that is definitely not relief washes over him as the not-nervous knot in his belly loosens. That was much easier than anticipated. That’s what makes Kraglin such a good first mate. He always knew what Yondu needed without him really having to spell it out for the other man.

“I’ll talk to Cook about it in the morning. Quill don’t have much meat on him, but that shouldn’t much matter if we make stew. Should be enough t’ go around,” Kraglin says. He flips over, facing away from Yondu, and closes his eyes to drift into dreamy slumber.

“… The fuck you talkin’ about?” Yondu must have misheard. Surely Kraglin wasn’t suggesting…

“Meat’s always more tender before they become full-grown.” Kraglin states rationally, turning back to face Yondu. He frowns at Yondu’s incredulous expression, “Unless ya wanted to roast ‘im? If ya do that, sir, there’d only be enough fer the officers, and the men have been wantin’ a bite since we picked ‘im up.”

Of course, roasting is a more delicious preparation, but Yondu really needs to understand Ravager politics. He’s been promising them all a taste since Day 1, and it wouldn’t do to unnecessarily ruffle so many feathers after waiting several years to deliver on the goods.

“We ain’t eatin’ him! I want ya to talk to ‘im ‘bout growin’ up and sex,” Yondu snaps at him.

That got Kraglin’s attention. Sure, Kraglin kind of liked the kid (sometimes, not often), but he would understand if Cap’n finally tired of his annoying Terran pet and decided to dispose of him in a way that would also improve crew morale. Two birds, one stone. Kraglin would help facilitate that. But this? This was something else entirely.

“Why me?” Kraglin finally asks after what seemed like an interminably long pause.

“Xandarians and Terrans… kinda similar, ain’t they? You look ‘xactly alike,” Yondu reasons.

Kraglin glares at Yondu.

“With all due respect: fuck you, sir.” Terrans are backwards hicks compared to Xandarians. Kraglin would never insinuate that Kree and Centaurians are the same because both are _blue_. Granted, that’s mostly because he prefers his brain arrow-free.

“Well, I can’t talk to ‘im about it. What am I goin’ to say when I get to the part ‘bout how to properly maintain yer pouch?” Yondu pats his own ruined, sewn-shut pouch. He knows it’s an underhanded move, but maybe if he played the sympathy card…

“Terrans don’t have pouches.” Kraglin says flatly. He’s not buying it. Yondu has seen Pete without his shirt on occasion.

“Exactly. I don’t know shit about the biology of you weird squishy pink beings,” Yondu pivots arguments easily.

Kraglin figures he is just being willfully obtuse now.

Kraglin is patient. Kraglin is loyal. Kraglin won’t shank his Cap’n to death. He likes the blue asshole marginally more than he hates this conversation.

He squints his eyes closed and pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing in the manner of a much-beleaguered man at the end of a particularly-asinine discussion. He may be subordinate to Cap’n outside the bedroom, but within his quarters, there are no such distinctions. Absent the threat of coercion, it’s the only way their relationship can work, and it’s the only way Kraglin is allowed what happens next.

“I ain’t doin’ it, Cap’n. When we picked up the brat and _you_ decided to keep it, we both agreed that you’d be responsible for it. That means feedin’, trainin’, and ‘specially talkin’ to it ‘bout sex,” Kraglin counts off on his fingers.

“Ain’t goin’ to change yer mind?”

“Nope.”

 

**Plan B: Talk to Quill Himself**

Yondu knows a lot about fucking. He’s had years of experience. Granted, no one ever sat him down and explicitly told him any of it, but he had been unwilling to show how little he had known about consensual sexual encounters the first time Stakar took his crew to a brothel and let him select his first hooker. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how he looked at it), Quill didn’t have quite the same survival skills Yondu had had to develop. He ponders Quill’s lack of observational ability as he summons the boy to his quarters.

There was no getting around it. Quill was never a particularly quick child. He had to be told how to do everything. This conversation would be just like the rest of them.

Quill stands at the threshold, noting Yondu’s seated position on the bed and the unreadable expression in his eyes.

“All right, boy, you and me? We goin’ to have ourselves a talk.” Yondu pats the bedspace next to him, indicating he should sit. Yondu figures this conversation should remain private, for both their sakes.

Quill obeys, but he’s wary. Yondu is trying too hard to be nice. Yondu is never nice. He is immediately suspicious.

“Yer gettin’ older, and yer body’s changin’,” Yondu says gruffly but as gently as he can. He places a calloused hand on Quill’s shoulder and gives it a light squeeze and a pat. “Will be a man soon enough.”

Yondu is not used to this. This would be so much easier if he could just beat it into the kid, like when he taught him self-defense. That had been fun, but this? This is fucking terrible. He’d rather strap electrodes to his balls and hand the controls to Taserface.

At the very least, Yondu figures he should get a baseline on the kid’s current knowledge, so he can correct any glaring, potentially-fatal mistakes first.

“So Quill, what ya know ‘bout fuckin’?” Yondu feels the boy’s shoulder tense under his hand.

 _Did he just…?_ Quill turns a pallid face to the much-older, much-stronger, much-more-violent man beside him. He weighs his options. He could take a swing at Yondu and make a break for the door, but Yondu only had to recover enough to whistle. Even if he miraculously knocked out the captain, he wouldn’t get too far on the Eclector. He’s too big and gawky to hide in the vents anymore, and there were too many Ravagers on the docks to steal an M-ship. Even if he managed that theft, they’d hunt him down quickly. Then, Yondu would make him regret it, maybe let the crew have their turn as well in his punishment. He longs for the days when all he had to worry about was simple cannibalism.

Unaware of Quill’s internal struggle, Yondu stares at him and frowns. He knew it. The boy is too young and obviously not ready for sex if he can’t even discuss it candidly with his mentor. Well, tough shit. Yondu is not going to do this twice, so Quill best listen up.

“I know I’m too young for it.” Quill says weakly. He hopes he can convince Yondu he’s not yet ripe. Maybe it will buy him enough time to make it to the next planet where he can disappear portside.

“Ain’t what ya said before, son.”

“You don’t want me. I’m too pink and too skinny. My bony ass will probably bruise your dick!” Peter panics.

“The fuck, Quill?” Yondu immediately withdraws any contact from the kid as if he was a hot iron. “Stop runnin’ yer mouth, boy.”

“You don’t want my mouth either! Full of teeth, and I don’t know how to not use them,” Quill continues to babble in desperation.

Yondu cuffs him on the back of the head to silence him.

“I. Ain’t. Gonna. Fuck. You.” he emphasizes each word to drill it into the idiot’s head.

“Then what–“

“Git the fuck out, Quill,” Yondu cuts him off. He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and waves him towards the door. Quill is confused, but he takes the offered exit and leaves quickly without further comment.

Once alone, Yondu sighs and falls back into the bed. Really, the kid thought _Yondu_ wanted to fuck _him_. Quill had always been a bit full of himself, but it was a ridiculous notion. Yondu is way too far out of his league for it to even be conceivable. The kid needs professional help.

 

**Plan C: Seek Professional Help**

It was a simple solution. Yondu is slightly embarrassed it took him this long to puzzle it out. Kid needs advice on sex. He should bring him to the professionals, like any responsible mentor/not-exactly-legal guardian would.

“Okay Quill. Pick one,” Yondu instructs his ward, indicating an assortment of male, female, and nonbinary prostitutes of various species waiting for their next customer.

Despite Yondu’s earlier insistence that he had not been coming on to him, Quill was a bit skittish when Yondu ordered him to accompany him on their next shore leave to Contraxia. When Yondu directed him towards the red light district, he definitely would have run had the captain not kept a firm grip on his shoulder as he led the way. When they passed the seedy hotel and entered the nearby brothel instead, Quill was relieved then elated.

“Really?” He can barely contain his excitement.

“Sure son, I’ll even pay fer it, too,” Yondu offers generously. By the stars, Yondu is going to get this one right even if it costs him some credits. Quill browses the selection in front of him before settling on an attractive Krylorian woman. Yondu approaches the woman with Quill practically bouncing in tow.

“What’s yer name, sweetheart?” Yondu addresses her.

“Koura,” she answers with a smile.

“Koura, how would ya like to teach my boy here ‘bout sex?” Yondu pushes Peter forward. Peter flashes her a sheepish smile, and gives her a small nervous wave. Yondu can be direct to the point of embarrassment.

Koura’s smile momentarily falters as she hesitates. The boy looked a little young to be in a place like this.

“What do you have in mind?” She asks.

“Body changes, diseases, how to avoid sirin’ brats, protection. You know, the usual,” Yondu congratulates himself on his exemplar mentoring. His boy will learn from someone who does this for a living. _A professional_. Can’t get much better than that.

“Yondu…” Quill visibly deflates.

“What? Ya thought I was goin’ to buy ya sex? Yer still a brat. I ain’t no pervert.” Really, what kind of man did Quill think he was? Maybe in a few years, if Quill is good and hasn’t driven Yondu to an early grave, they’ll revisit the issue. Until then–

“So, you’re not paying for me to have sex with him?” Koura seems skeptical. It’s not a common request.

“Naw. Look at ‘im; he’s underage... probably. Look, I jus’ want ya to explain sex to the kid. Make sure he don’t end up fatherin’ no brats or catchin’ anything that can’t be fixed with a shot. Maybe give ‘im a couple pointers.” Yondu isn’t too sure what is discussed during these talks, but that seems like a good start.

“250 credits.”

“C’mon sweetheart. Pretty lady like you; I’m sure ya can give me a better price than that. I’m just askin’ ya to talk to the kid, not fuck ‘im,” Yondu attempts flattery. It is not effective.

“You’re still buying the hour whether my clothes stay on or not.” Unfortunately for Yondu, Koura is all business.

Yondu scowls, but he supposes that’s fair. After what happened last time, he would pay twice that amount to not have to talk to the kid.

“Okay, deal, but ya better cover hormonal self-regulation and all the diseases, even the necrotizin’ ones that make yer dick fall off. I want ya to show ‘im the pictures,” Yondu begrudgingly transfers the agreed-upon credits.

 _Dick fall off?_ Pete pulls a face and unconsciously shrinks around his groin.

 

* * *

 

“You sure we can’t make this a _practical_ lesson?” Peter asks for the fourth time. Koura considers covering rules of consent in her lesson plan. There are enough assholes out there pushing for sex without adding Peter to their number.

“Sorry kid. No means no. No exceptions.”

“Not a kid!” Peter insists, but his petulant expression undermines his argument.

“As I was saying, sex can be a lot of fun, and in some cases very profitable, but you have to be sure to be careful...”

“Uh huh. So… How does love factor into all this? It’s related right?” Peter interrupts yet again. He keeps this up, and Koura is going to have to charge Yondu overtime.

“Your dad didn’t pay me to explain that to you,” she glances at the clock. They should have enough time to cover the major points if they stay on track.

Peter shudders then pulls a face. “He’s not my dad. That’d be weird! Dropping your son off at some brothel to learn about sex?”

“Trust me, Peter. It’s way weirder that he’s not your dad,” Koura says. That silences any retort Peter had prepared at the tip of his tongue.

“Now, let me show you how to put on a condom.” Koura fishes out a large dildo from her stash in a side drawer. She considers it, looks pointedly at Peter’s clothed crotch, then puts it back in favor of a smaller one.

“Hey!”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m only being realistic. Been in this industry a while; I can tell.” She tears open the condom package and removes the ringed prophylactic.

Peter blushes, wondering if Yondu slipped her a little extra to give him an inferiority complex. He wouldn’t put it past that cockblocking asshole.

“It’s a grower!”

 

* * *

 

Yondu is waiting for him outside at the end of the hour. Peter sourly wonders if he had time to enjoy the brothel himself in the more traditional sense while Peter was stuck in sex ed with a prostitute who wouldn’t even take off her top.

“Okay Quill, all done? Learned everythin’?”

“Well, she told me–“

Yondu cuts him off: “Don’t need no details. Just yes or no.”

“Yes?” Peter has no idea what he’s confirming, but it seems the safer option for everyone involved.

“All right, now here’re yer condoms and some slick. Starter pack. I’ll deduct the cost from yer next score.”

 _Cheap Bastard._ Peter gives him a dirty look, but he accepts the items nonetheless. Still, he would like some clarification on a few things…

“Okay, but I–“

“But what, boy?” Yondu’s stern tone does not invite questions. He just paid to have Quill educated. He can’t possibly have questions _already_.

Peter looks at Yondu and knows immediately he can’t ask. Questions about sentiment would only be answered by fists. Besides, it’s not like Yondu has ever _loved_ anyone or anything in his life, save money and shiny trinkets. He might as well be asking a potbellied bullfrog what it’s like to fly. Pete sighs.

“I want to know where I can get more of these. What if I run out?” Pete asks, pocketing them in his oversized Ravager coat.

 _Boy is finally asking the smart questions_. Yondu considers the lessons as money well spent.

“Buy ‘em at the commissary,” is what Yondu says, but Peter hears, _Don’t come to me._

Later, Peter sits on a bench in an empty breakroom of the Eclector. He pulls out the string of condoms to examine the packaging. Considering what Koura had told him about the sheer variety of alien genitalia available in the galaxy, he wonders if Yondu got the right size and shape and how disturbing it would be if he did.

“Hey Pete, whatchu got there?” Kraglin sneaks up behind him and snatches the strip from his hands. Now that Yondu has finally talked to the kid, he figures he’s ripe for some heckling. Pete always did turn a very satisfying shade of red when embarrassed, and Kraglin has no shame exploiting that.

“Hey! Give that back! It’s mine!” Peter protests.

“Don’t know why ya have these. Ain’t like yer goin’ to use ‘em any time soon,” Kraglin holds them up, but Peter easily jumps up to grab it from his hand. He almost succeeds. _Huh, guess the kid is gettin’ quite a bit taller,_ Kraglin thinks.

“I know! They’re just in case. To stop my dick from falling off,” Pete knows there’s more to it, but he’s flustered.

“Stop what?” _Were Terrans one of those species that only mate once?_

Pete takes advantage of Kraglin’s confusion to steal the condoms back and pocket them. He feels simultaneously too old and too young for this shit.

Peter knows Kraglin is a deadly Ravager who has no qualms slitting the throats of those who cross him. He can be a giant bag of dicks like that. However, Kraglin has never been quite as openly hostile to his presence on the Eclector compared to some of the crew. Plus, he’s closer in age to Pete and slightly more approachable than Yondu. If Pete is going to ask someone, he could do worse.

“Mom used to tell me that finding someone to love… well, it’s important. That one day, I’ll find that person and understand. Then Koura said sex is fun if I do it proper, and love is a separate thing that Yondu didn’t pay her enough to explain to me, but I feel like they kind of go together maybe? Then there’s Yondu. I’m sure he sleeps around all the time without it meaning anything at all. I don’t know… Maybe things are just different on Terra?” Pete asks.

“Isn’t Koura a hooker at that whorehouse on Contraxia? The pretty pink one with the big assets.” Kraglin feels a headache coming on.

Pete thinks Kraglin might be missing the point.

“Yeah… but Yondu only hired her to _talk_ to me about sex. Nothing fun,” he says, despondently.

_Fuck. Why does Yondu have to be so… Yondu._

Kraglin considers the poor confused boy before him. Despite his growth, he has a touch of baby fat in his cheeks and the weird, awkward proportions of early adolescence. In short, Pete is still that same soft brat Yondu snatched up on Terra.

Kraglin supposes he could let him carry on as he is. Pete will get it eventually… hopefully before he gets emotionally attached to the first older asshole he fucks, someone who barely gives two shits about him beyond what’s in his pants, someone who won’t think twice to sell the street kid he’s fucking for a dime bag of Sulta and a case of huffer cigarettes. But hey, those experiences make good mortar for building up emotional walls.

Or he could do something different.

Kraglin sighs.

“It’s kind of both, Petey,” he begins to say. He’s going to regret this. He just knows it. Pete perks up and looks over at him.

“Most times, sex is just sex. Yer both just gettin’ yer rocks off. It’s fun, but there ain’t much to it, so try not to get too sweet on ‘em too fast. Don’t expect much, and ya won’t be too disappointed when it don’t pan out,” Kraglin shrugs.

“Sometimes, there’s affection there, too, and that can be kind o’ nice. Means you’ll fuck ‘em more’n once an’ maybe try some real freaky shit,” Kraglin runs his fingers through his Mohawk and smiles at a memory Pete is glad he’s not privy to. “And rarely, really rare and if yer lucky… there’s love.”

“How do you know when it’s love?”

“Ya just know.”

“Oh, you mean like when Tony sees Maria for the first time at the dance hall?” Pete nods in understanding. Finally, something he can understand.

“Who’s that now?” Kraglin looks at Pete quizzically. The kid is always going off on some nonsense tangent instead of sticking to the subject at hand.

“In West Side Story,” Pete elaborates as if that should be self-explanatory. Space pirates: they have no culture.

“Naw… I don’t know what yer talkin’ about, but it sounds like a load o’ shit,” Kraglin shakes his head. _Kids these days_. Pete looks offended, but he wisely keeps quiet. He really wants to know the answer, and keeping Kraglin talking is his best bet.

“You spend time with a person, and slowly, ya just feel it when yer with ‘em. Is like being swallowed by a Carnivorous Lilyflower. You don’t even know yer caught ‘til yer halfway down its gullet an’ strugglin’ to escape. You freak out a bit and try to deny it, but it’s true. Eventually, you accept it. Then, ya have to decide if yer goin’ ta put in the work to grow it. Hell, ya may even find you do shit for ‘em that ya don’t like, but they need.”

“You make love sound so appealing,” Peter deadpans. The way Kraglin tells it, why would anyone even bother?

“Well, they do the same fer you. Don’t get me wrong. It feels great, kind o’ happy an’ light, and it makes the sex amazin’, but it’s a lot of work, Petey, lovin’ someone. Kind of worth it though.” Peter looks over at the other man in surprise at Kraglin’s contemplative tone. When their eyes meet, it seems to bring Kraglin back into the present moment.

“But barely,” he amends.

It’s too late. Pete catches his slip-up.

“You ever been in love before, Kraglin?”

“Do I look like the type to moon over someone?”

“Maybe… Ow!” Pete rubs the back of his head where Kraglin had cuffed him at his answer.

“I ain’t soft, kid. Best you remember that.”

“Thanks. For a moment there, I forgot you were a heartless dick,” Pete scowls at him.

“Too many hits to the head. It’s affectin’ yer memory,” Kraglin adds helpfully, giving him a toothy grin.


	2. My Baby Shot Me Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos gives Gamora and Nebula the sex talk. Gamora and Nebula’s sisterly bond is tested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is going to get dark.

Gamora is born into a tribe of Zehoberei, the second child of a modest family. Her father loves her mother loves her sister loves her. After their elder daughter’s birth, Gamora’s parents had hoped for a son, but Caliope always wanted a sister. They play in the salt flats, stacking up crusty pink blocks into towering structures easily toppled and swim in the deep blue saline waters of a nearby lake.

“You want to pick a round flat one,” her sister instructs, handing Gamora the perfect skipping stone. Gamora smooths her hand against the flattened exterior of the specimen, committing the shape to memory.

“Tip it a little like this,” Caliope angles her own pebble down a bit, “then spin as you let go.” She tosses it across the lake. It bounces thrice before sinking below the dark surface.

_Tak. Tak. Tak. Plop._

Gamora attempts the same motion, but it belly flops into the water.

_Plink_.

“It’s not fair!” she pouts. Being older, Caliope is better than her at a lot of things. She runs faster, climbs higher, and throws farther, often besting Gamora in childish games of physical skill.

“You’ll get it eventually,” the older girl laughs, touching her forehead to Gamora’s and sweeping her hair behind an ear when she disengages. She searches the banks for another stone disc with which to throw.

When she’s six, Thanos exterminates her people in response to a perceived slight by the chief’s son. Her father dies first, split in twain by the fall of an ax. Her mother burns away in clean blue energy. When he rips her sister from her arms, screaming and wet-eyed, Thanos pulverizes her skull against the stone wall of their home, leaving a dark blue smear and abrupt silence in his wake. He turns to Gamora. She’s terrified; the adrenaline rush roaring through her veins short-circuits her higher brain functions and liquefies her joints into loose, quivering limbs. She can hear her blood pulsing in her ears. She knows she won’t survive.

She attacks him anyway.

Grabbing a sharp rock, she leaps towards his face, aiming to stick his eye, to blind him, to spite him. It’s a futile gesture, as he knocks the crude weapon from her hand and curls cruel fingers around her throat, squeezing just enough to dim the light in her eyes without snuffing it completely. As her sharp, thin fingernails pull and scratch at his massive hands, Thanos thinks he sees something in this lone survivor.

He takes her back to his barren world and trains her in the art of battle and brutality. He calls her daughter and promises her a new family stitched together from the stronger bits of broken peoples. Gamora doesn’t look forward to much past making it through tomorrow, much less a new family. She’s too weak now, but one day soon, she’ll be strong; strong enough to bury her sword in Thanos’s soft eye, to feel the squelch as it passes through optic nerve to brain and out the back of his skull. She wonders idly why Thanos even bothers lying, thinking perhaps it’s a test of gullibility or to check for any remaining soft spots of sentimentality.

Then, Nebula arrives.

Thanos had promised her a family, and as Gamora learns, he always delivers. However, when her father pushes her new sister towards her, she’s disappointingly soft. Gamora wonders what Thanos saw in the Luphomoid, forgetting that she herself was (is?) small and soft as well. Nebula is slight and shivering and calls her “Sister.” She’s not Caliope, but when Thanos rages, they cower and huddle together just the same under his wrath, intertwining green and blue.

Gamora has never been an only child, so she catches herself falling into old habits with Nebula, mirroring her relationship with Caliope. It’s not a perfect facsimile, but it is close enough to threaten to temper Gamora’s emotional fortitude. They train; they spar; but they also play. Sometimes in those early days, Nebula speaks of the before-times, before Thanos killed her clan, before he stole her away, before she met Gamora. Gamora doesn’t. It’s been a year for her, and it’s ~~too painful~~ irrelevant to their present. When Nebula cries, Gamora wipes her tears, touches her soft blue forehead with her own, and lies to her that everything will be okay. Later, skipping rocks across the asteroid belt, Gamora praises Nebula for a rather impressive skip. Nebula looks up at Gamora with fondness in her deep black eyes.

Nebula loves Gamora. Gamora thinks she might even love Nebula, but it’s a dangerous, defiant feeling. They keep it hidden from their father, communicating their sisterly bond through hands lingering a touch too long after sparring matches and fond whispers over shared kills after hunts.

“You know it’s ripe when it’s light pink and it gives just a little when you squeeze it,” Gamora says when she hands a jakafruit to Nebula. Nebula tests the soft firmness herself, but she squeezes too hard, indenting then squishing through the skin. Juice squirts out over her hands, and she laps it up off sticky fingers with her dark navy tongue.

“It’s sweet,” Nebula approves before biting into the bruised flesh. In Thanos’s realm, few things are.

When Gamora is 15 and Nebula 12, Thanos notices Gamora’s developing figure is no longer the stick-thin bean of a child. He calls Gamora and Nebula to his throne room (because he cannot be bothered to give this speech more than once) to inform them of the impending arrival of a powerful weapon, a new uniquely-feminine tool in their war arsenal they will soon be able to wield.

“As you mature into grown women, your bodies will begin to change. You will become desirable to men and even some women, those weaker than myself or you. Through means of this… _pelvic sorcery_ , this vulnerability can be deepened and exploited, carefully manipulated to form a hole in a target’s armor through which you can stab…” Thanos’s voice is low and even. He doesn’t stumble through his speech, the words coming easily to him. Despite his insistence of familial bonds, he views the two before him as weapons, and this knowledge will only make them more efficient, more deadly, better able to serve his purposes. Gamora and Nebula stare ahead blankly, absorbing the new information as they would any mission specification.

“… Expressing sexual interest in the target may momentarily disarm him, giving you a chance to strike first. As the fairer sex, he will expect the act to bind you to him emotionally and will not anticipate an attack. If you can develop his feelings towards you, more delicate manipulation may be possible and more fruitful in the long run…”

It was Gamora’s first introduction to sex. She wouldn’t have to use those lessons for another two years.

 

* * *

 

Thanos desires the annexation of Talassan. The only person standing in his way is a powerful politician, Elian Voorlis. If he doesn’t surrender, Thanos vows to pike his head and the heads of his family upon the turrets of the capital building until the flesh rots from their skulls and the bones turn to ash. Still, Voorlis refuses. He’s made his decision, which is fine because Thanos has as well.

Thanos always keeps his promises.

 

* * *

 

Elian Voorlis is a prudent, careful man, as is his elder son and de facto heir. With their high profile being as much a privilege as a prison, they are wary of threats to their persons and understand the necessity of bodyguards and limited public access. Voorlis’s younger son, Solaris, is less convinced. Operating under the fallacy of invulnerability afforded by his youth, Solaris frequently slips his guards to hang out with friends, drinking in the alley behind the liquor store that doesn’t check whether the ID matches his friend’s face or just flying along outbound main-ways until the buildings become sparse and the desert cacti becomes thick and he can almost escape his famous last name.

It’s during one of these surreptitious excursions that he meets Gamora.

Assimilation hadn’t been difficult for her. Teenage boys are easily-malleable to the whims of a pretty face, while Gamora is rather striking and willing to suffer their company.

“This’s Mara Amano,” one of his friends introduces Gamora to Solaris. “She just moved here a couple weeks ago. We met at the races.”

“Solaris,” he responds, taking a swig and passing her the communal bottle. He doesn’t bother giving his last name, hating the recognition it brings. Gamora studies him at a glance. He’s largely unremarkable: Krylorian, a very common humanoid race littered across the galaxy. With glowing amber eyes, dark hair, blandly attractive face, and an average build, he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd of pink, save for his famous family. Gamora notes his wrinkled clothes are sewn from an expensive fabric, which he is carelessly soiling by his lazy lean against the dirty wall of the alley. She supposes he’s a touch rebellious but in the way of a privileged child unaware of the advantages he has been given. She doesn’t like him, which makes this easier.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she says affably, giving him a bright smile she copied from a teen holo-program and had practiced for weeks beforehand. She’s careful to ensure no familiarity alights her eyes at the introduction. “Mara” is new to the area, she reminds herself. She’s just trying to make friends, and she wants her peers to like her; nothing more.

Gamora becomes a fixture within Solaris’s social group, subtly ingratiating herself to his goodwill. She is invited to a desert bonfire, where she strategically places herself next to her target on a shared blanket. By the time the trio of moons has risen high late that night, most of the teens are drunk and laughing while some have fallen asleep and have various alien genitalia drawn on their slack faces.

“My father pulled some strings and arranged for me to go to Wexlor Academy next year. It’s the top university around. Stars know I didn’t earn it. Says it’s time I straightened out and got serious. Sometimes, I wish I can just tell him to fuck off,” Solaris tells her.

Later Gamora would blame her lapse of judgement on the alcohol instead of latent father issues and a natural aversion to snobbery.

“It must be difficult, being so privileged and having a father who cares enough to make sure you have the best shot in life. Is there some charity I can donate to in order to help poor souls like you get a fair shake?” She says before she can stop herself.

Gamora braces for the fall-out. Rich kids never like being called out for their insufferable whinging. She should never have risen to the bait, despite how tantalizing it had been. All that undercover work… undone in two sentences. She’ll have to find another way to get close to Elian Voorlis…

Solaris snorts, stifling his laughter. Gamora turns to him in surprise.

“I feel like that’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me, Mara. Fucking finally,” he says, leaning back on his elbows with a stupid grin on his face.

Gamora kicks his leg, and he lightly taps it right back against her’s and laughs full, like the child he is.

From then on, she acts less the enamored schoolgirl and more her honest self… well, as honest as she can be with a mark. Solaris seems to like her significantly better when she isn’t fawning over him.

“This spot I know up ahead, it has the most beautiful view of the sunset. Prettiest thing you’ve ever seen,” Solaris says one day when they are cruising through a long, flat stretch of desert.

“What about when Egard’s mooncalf had kits? You said it made the prettiest picture, the mother caring for her babies, or is that just what you tell all the girls?” She asks in faux seriousness.

“Third prettiest, then. After the kits and whatever you see in the mirror every morning, but not in that order,” He says smoothly. Gamora gently bats his shoulder, but she smiles just the same.

Squat prickly cacti litter the rust-colored sandy landscape speeding past the windshield. Interspersed between are larger brambly bushes where snakes hide from screeching sharp-clawed Taplebirds. It would be the perfect spot to dispose of a body where the local fauna could have their fill, unused to such a feast. Gamora hopes this won’t be the fate of the Voorlis family when the time comes. Solaris deserves better. Thanos will want his head, but she will give his body a proper burial, if the tyrant doesn’t expressly forbid it.

When they reach their destination, a lookout point facing west, they exit the craft and park themselves on a large rock sitting apart from each other with legs kicked out in front of them, waiting for sunset.

“Want to hear a sad story?” He asks her.

“Okay,” Gamora says. She crosses her extended legs at the calves. It will pass the time.

“So, there once was a baker’s apprentice named Soren. Soren was satisfied with his daily routine of learning his craft and courting the tailor’s daughter. Every night, he would pass out the day’s unsold bread to the poor and hungry. It made him happy to help people any way he could. One day, the king was passing through and saw Soren with his distinctive birthmark on his cheek. He recognized him as his long-lost son kidnapped from infancy. Soren became a prince with all the benefits and responsibilities that entails. He married a princess and never had to bake another loaf of bread for the rest of his life.”

“… That’s not a very good story, and you didn’t tell it very well,” Gamora says after a pause.

“I suppose not.”

“You should have started from the beginning when the king lost his son or mentioned Soren’s birthmark in some way before the reveal. That all seemed kind of tacked on there at the end,” she points out.

“Okay, okay, I get it. I suck at storytelling. I promise not to make a career of it,” Solaris concedes exasperatedly.

“It’s not even a sad story.” Gamora continues her criticism.

“What if he just wanted to be a baker? You know, live a normal life,” Solaris replies simply.

Gamora thinks about salt flats and deep blue lakes. She thinks about thrones and greatness and prisons without walls and how none of them have much choice in the matter. She supposes he might have something there.

“We can’t always choose our destinies,” she states enigmatically. Solaris will die. Gamora will kill him. And yet–

As they watch the bright orange sunset break over the edge of the flat plateau, Gamora rests her head against his shoulder, and she watches Solaris’s pink skin shift red through the tops of her dark lashes. He tentatively puts an arm around her back, shaky hand resting on her waist.

That night, shy like the virgins they are, they fumble in the backseat, sharing furtive kisses and shedding clothing into mixed piles. More than once, they clack teeth together and painfully collide noses to foreheads in their inexperience. It doesn’t last long, and Solaris looks embarrassed afterwards, but Gamora simply cups his chin and presses her lips to his cheek in a chaste kiss.

Several weeks later, when they are getting dressed in the back of his civilian craft, Solaris tells her, “I want you to come to my house for dinner tomorrow and meet my parents.”

“What?” Gamora says, pulling her shirt over her head. She has been waiting for this moment, but to have it happen now…

“You know. Dinner. Eat, talk about the weather, get interrogated about your family and future goals and intentions towards their darling boy. The usual. It will be – okay, not fun, but I promise you’ll make it out alive,” Solaris jokes, but it falls flat. Gamora isn’t so certain she can make the same guarantee.

“So… what do you say?” He looks over at her hopefully, face falling at Gamora’s slight frown.

“Tomorrow?” She asks. He nods.

“… Okay.”

“Great, we’ll send a car. Pick you up at 6,” He confirms.

After he drops her off, Gamora comms Nebula and passes on the information. She has an in, and she will need back-up.

 

* * *

 

“Mara dear, Solaris has told us so much about you,” Mrs. Voorlis says over a course of soup. She is a polite, pleasant sort of woman, a born socialite raised in a world were cotillions and political fundraisers are customary social events.

“Yes, he has mentioned you quite a bit of late. Tell me, Mara, what do your parents do?” Mr. Voorlis asks.

“My father is a carpenter, and my mother is a seamstress,” Gamora answers. It’s what her real parents had been in life and what she had told Solaris. Sometimes it’s easier to embroider a falsehood with the details of truth. It’s less to remember and lends a veneer of believability to the larger lie.

“That’s _interesting._ They must be doing very well to be able to send you to Liore Prep,” Mr. Voorlis comments. It had been a better story than “back alley of a liquor store.”

“It’s honest work.” Solaris is a tinge defensive. He understands the unspoken slight, the backhanded compliment, for what it is in his father’s seemingly-innocuous comment. He knows his father would rather he date within his social circle, but Solaris really likes Mara, and despite claims to the contrary, he had hoped his family would approve.

It is between the second and third course of the rather stiff affair that there is a blast outside and bodyguards swarm into the dining room.

“Sir, there has been an attack. We need to get you and your family to safety,” one of the bodyguards instructs Mr. Voorlis. Silverware clangs against porcelain as the Voorlises abandon dinner to follow their security detail out. Unnoticed, Gamora slips the steak knife from her table setting into her sleeve. When she stands, Solaris takes her by the elbow to follow his family out of the dining room.

The panic room is a wide bunker just off the master bedroom. It’s bare, containing little more than a metal bench along three walls, but functional, protected by a dense adamantium shell with a single door. As it closes, thick rods from the heavy door extend out to interlock with the floor and are programmed only to open to the biometric markers of one of the Voorlis family. Presently, Gamora, the Voorlises, and a personal bodyguard pile into the room, while the security team deals with the external threat.

The commotion outside echoes within the walls of the panic room. With every scream and expended blaster, the atmosphere in the bunker becomes ever grimmer; all the more so since the chaotic sounds fail to cease and in fact, come closer. The inhabitants of the bunker huddle together, and at a particularly nearby-sounding screech, Gamora feels Solaris jump just a little through his protective embrace. The slight scratch of his sparse adolescent stubble against her forehead, the warmth of his skin against hers, the musky smell underneath his cologne that is uniquely Solaris… Gamora savors these comforting details in the moments before everything changes. Perhaps she holds on a bit too long because too soon after, silence falls outside, and three sharp raps followed by two slow ring against the door.

It is time.

Gamora disentangles from Solaris and moves to stand. He places a hand on her arm to warn her back. It’s not safe.

“Not yet. The assailants might still be out there. It’s best if we wait for reinforcements from the local precinct,” the lone bodyguard tells her. He thinks she’s just a helpless girl who is too naive to know the enemy is on the other side of the door.

Gamora takes one last glance at Solaris. There’s concern, trust, affection in his eyes. This will be the last time he looks at her like that ever again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers as the knife slips into her hand. She stabs his father in the temple while kicking the bodyguard in the face, breaking his nose. He draws his service weapon, but she kicks him down and stomps again and again until his head caves in with a sickly squelch, and the blaster clatters to the floor, sliding under the bench. Chaos erupts. There’s disbelief and shrieking and the coppery smell of blood as the remaining Voorlis members scramble to get away from her in the cramped space. She roughly pulls Mr. Voorlis’s arm to the door, disengaging the biolock with a press of his palm. A blood-soaked Nebula steps in, handing Gamora a sword. Gamora knows none of the red saturating her clothes and skin belongs to Nebula. Her sister bleeds blue.

Nebula advances on the remaining occupants of the bunker, intending to make quick work of Voorlis’s wife and elder son. This is just a job, and Nebula has yet to develop her father’s sadism.

Gamora faces Solaris, sword raised and ready. At the sounds of his family’s slaughter around him, he retrieves the dead bodyguard’s blaster from under the bench and trains it, trembling, on her. She charges forward as his finger lightly grazes the trigger.

In the end, Solaris hesitates. Gamora does not.

Surprise and betrayal are frozen on his features. He had been kind to her, hadn’t he? Gamora stares unmoving and emotionless at his unseeing, unfocused eyes before Nebula steps into view, raises her sword, and cleaves his neck, separating head from body in one clean stroke. She bends down to pick up his severed head by its mane. The captured hair pulls taut at his scalp. Red drips from the slice beneath.

“Sister, you’re going to need this to bring back to Father.” Nebula holds the macabre offering out to Gamora. It’s a small gesture that reminds Gamora of the mission, of why she is here. She snaps back to herself.

“Thank you, Nebula,” she responds as she accepts the gift. Nebula knows her meaning is deeper than simple gratitude for harvesting the head. For one terrible moment, her sister had been on the verge of paralyzing regret.

Gamora understands now. Solaris’s mistake was trusting her, loving her. If Gamora is to survive, she can’t afford soft feelings for anyone. Still, as she hurries back to Nebula’s M-ship, shoulder to shoulder with her sister, she can’t help but feel affection for Nebula.

Later, they stand before Thanos, bloodied and victorious, bearing the heads of Elian Voorlis, his wife, and sons.

“You have pleased me, daughters,” he says as his personal servant, the Other, relieves them of their dripping burdens. He secures them on the dangling meathooks of a long staff brought for transport to the capital.

When Thanos dismisses them, the sisters turn to leave. Nebula trips over the Other’s staff, but is saved from stumbling by Gamora’s steady hand on her shoulder. She quickly retracts her assistance, hoping their father did not see her lapse betraying sentiment. He says nothing, and Gamora carefully exhales a breath she did not know she was holding in.

It’s not too long after that Thanos decides to pit his daughters against each other.

“Gamora. Nebula. Spar. This is a test of your mettle. Do not disappoint me,” Thanos voice is low, his tone promising pain if they hold back. The Other throws each twin batons at their feet, less lethal than their swords but substantially more agonizing if Thanos intends the victor to bludgeon the other to death, depending on his mood. When Gamora grasps them, her hands sweat despite the cool surface of the heavy weapons.

They face each other, both uncertain but determined. As they begin, they clash and exchange blows, a whirl of colorful limbs and dull extensions seeming evenly matched, each attacking and blocking in turn. Then, Gamora sees it: an opening in the wake of Nebula’s blocked low feint. She doesn’t waver as she brings her baton down on Nebula’s exposed left shoulder, cracking the joint, making Nebula drop her baton. Gamora follows through with the attack, smashing the fingers of Nebula’s right hand causing her other baton to clatter to the ground. She kicks Nebula onto her back, planting her foot in her sister’s chest, swinging her baton down but stopping just short of her head. Gamora’s eyes beg her sister to surrender.

“Enough,” Thanos says evenly from his throne. Gamora steps back fluidly rearranging herself into a seemingly-relaxed, disaffected stance. She knows better than to assist her sister. Nebula has to show her strength even in defeat, if Thanos is to let her live.

Nebula sits up, grasping her left shoulder with crooked, crushed fingers, but before she can stand, Thanos nods to the Other, who roughly pulls Nebula to her feet by her injured upper arm, restraining her in the process. Nebula stifles her cry of pain, grimacing briefly before affecting a neutral expression.

“How… Disappointing. Nebula. We shall strive to improve your deficiencies until such a time you stand as Gamora’s equal in strength and skill,” Thanos orders as the Other takes her away. Nebula can’t help but look back over her shoulder at Gamora, wishing for help while knowing it won’t come.

The next time Gamora sees Nebula, her left arm has been replaced by a cybernetic prosthesis. Gamora wonders if it aches at the juncture where metal meets angry pinched blue skin.

“Nebula, we shall test out your new enhancement to see if it is sufficient.” Thanos orders in a calm, even tone from his perch on the throne.

“Gamora, proceed.”

It is not sufficient.

The second piece he removes is Nebula’s head, or rather, her skull plate. The new metallic implant gleams in the dim light of Thanos’s throne room when Gamora sees her next. Gamora wants to run her fingers over the polished surface, tactilely familiarizing herself with the changes to her sister’s face. Nebula’s blue skin had been warm and soft. Is the replacement as cool to the touch as it looks? Nebula flinches. Gamora withdraws.

“Gamora, proceed.”

Gamora and Nebula slip into a sparring stance. Nebula hopes this will be the last time, but she takes in Gamora’s stony determination and knows her sister won’t go easy on her. She prays to gods she no longer believes in that she’s wrong.

She’s not.

By the fourth upgrade, Nebula thinks she might hate Gamora.

By the seventh, she does.

“Here, Nebula,” Gamora holds out a blush-pink jakafruit afterwards.

Nebula stares at the proffered fruit, then turns away to pluck her own from another branch. It’s a touch green to Gamora’s eye.

“That one isn’t ripe,” Gamora tells her, still holding her selection out to her sister.

Nebula bites into it anyway, crunching loudly. The texture is too crispy dry over her tongue, but she savors the flavor. It tastes of victory, of spite, of everything her omnipotent father has ever touched.

It tastes bitter. **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gamora and Nebula’s dialogue is purposely so sparse and passive in this chapter to demonstrate how little control they have over their lives in their youth. Peter is allowed to be himself for the most part because Yondu is an a-hole, but he’s not 100% dick like Thanos. At least Yondu cares about Peter and isn’t actively trying to raise a psychopath.


	3. When I Grew Up, I Called Him Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yondu teaches his boy the Ravager Code, but Peter takes after him in unexpected ways, much to Yondu’s dismay. Peter and Gamora meet during the Orb incident, and both claim a new family.

_Codebreaker_.

The first time Peter hears it, he has only been on the Eclector for six months. The insult is lobbed at Yondu’s back in a marketplace on Rajak and followed by a vindictive spit in the dirt. Captain doesn’t pause in his jaunt through the public street, but his back becomes a little straighter, his mouth thinner, and his mood significantly darker. The perpetrators are a group of men dressed similarly to Yondu’s crew but in dark blue jumpsuits. Kraglin sneers in their direction, his face adopting a look that often portends a fight and his fingers twitch towards the hilt of one of his many hidden knives. The open emotional wounds from the trial are still new, still raw, and Yondu chafes against the sting, but he was still hopeful of a pardon in those early days. Surely Stakar will hear him out and reconsider his punishment after he has some time to think. So, Yondu tamps down the urge to rage against Stakar’s crew, choosing to later direct his wrath towards a group of his own hapless recruits in the privacy of the Eclector to quell the razor-sharp edge of anger and shame within him.

“What’s a Codebreaker?” Peter asks once Yondu is in a less whistle-y mood.

Yondu considers putting Quill on indefinite bog-duty until he learns to staunch the flow of seemingly-endless, endlessly-annoying questions, but he figures it’s time the boy absorbed the local culture. Perhaps doing so will crowd out some of that Terran nonsense about honesty and hygiene from his limited headspace.

“We Ravagers, we have a code. Anyone who breaks it gits exiled.”

“Are you a Codebreaker?”

Yondu considers it for a moment. “They think I am.”

“What did you do?”

“Didn’t do nothin’. Is a misunderstandin’ is all.”

“What do they think you did?” Quill really doesn’t know when to quit. He can be an irritating combination of tenacity and selective sporatic perceptiveness, especially when it’s inconvenient to his long-suffering mentor.

“They think I sliced pieces off some runt and fed ‘em to him before skewering him on a dull pike from the wrong end. Inhuman torture they called it, but really, I only ate ‘im fer askin’ too many questions. Ain’t no code ‘bout that.” Yondu plasters on the farce of a smile, split wide showing off his jagged chipped teeth.

Quill’s eyes go large and watery, but it has the desired effect. He shuts up.

Yondu thinks of the Ravager Code as a set of guiding principles that can be bent to fit a given situation. Take that Ego job for example. The code clearly states “No child trafficking,” but Yondu hadn’t thought that particular rule applied to children being returned to their rightful father… in exchange for large sums of cash obviously. It’s true he hadn’t asked too many questions at the time, only enough to secure a promise from Ego that he wouldn’t hurt the little buggers. Yondu had believed him, and why not? Why would a father go through the trouble and expense of procuring his own children if he didn’t want them alive and well? Ego was an uptight jackass, but Yondu hadn’t pegged him as a monster. He was wrong, horrifyingly wrong, but at the time, Yondu thought he was being well-compensated for providing a public service.

Stakar Ogord vehemently disagreed of course.

Even now, exiled and despised, Yondu still considers himself a proper Ravager, same as any other Captain flying under the seven-pointed flame, and he’s going to teach the boy the rules… with some insignificant alterations, of course. After all, Yondu himself always thought the Code should come with asterisks.

**Ravagers don’t deal in slaves.**

“That one’s easy,” Quill says, “I learned that back in Ms. Johnston’s class. Slavery is real bad.”

“Really? They teach ya that on yer Terra?” That makes this a little easier. At least Yondu won’t have to explain the horrors of being owned to the young boy. Sometimes, the nightmares overwhelm him at night, and he wakes with hands on his wrists and a battered Kraglin looking down at him through the beginnings of a black eye, trying to soothe him with a mouth full of blood and missing teeth.

“Yeah, slaves had to pick cotton all day without recess. Then, the guy that invented Lincoln logs decided slavery was bad, so he became president and fought the people who had slaves and freed them all, which is why we shoot fireworks on the fourth of July. It’s our Dependence Day.”

_Close enough_.

“But… space still has slaves?” Quill looks perplexed. Space is ridiculously advanced. Surely, they would have figured out the _basics_ by now.

“Yeah, some places. So, stick close to us when we go planetside, ya hear.”

“Was Narblik a slave?” Quill asks conspiratorially, his voice low.

Yondu pauses, then: “What kind’a question is that?”

“Well… only black people were slaves,” he whispers, as if it’s sensitive information.

“What kind of backwards... No, he weren’t. Narblik ain’t black anyway. He brown. And stop stickin’ yer nose in other’s affairs, boy. That’s a quick way to end up dead.”

 

**Never fall behind.***

While not an official rule, it is a useful one to remember as Yondu never waits for stragglers. If a crewmember was late, said crewmember found himself dead or marooned on some backwater planet and shit-out-of-luck until (or if) the Eclector docked there again.

“Time to head out, boys!” Yondu hollers on his way to the bridge.

“Gruhl’s not back yet.” Peter hurries along, lagging a couple paces behind Yondu. He’s 9-years-old, and his legs are still short, forcing him to take twice as many steps to cover the same distance as his captain.

Peter likes Gruhl. He’s not nearly as mean to Peter as the other Ravagers. He talks to him, teaches him how to play cards, and even gives him sweet ration bars on the sly. Sometimes Gruhl even massages his shoulders, which can be a touch painful after one of Yondu’s self-defense training sessions. Peter doesn’t like it much, but he doesn’t want to alienate his only friend. He thinks Yondu has a rule against being nice to the emergency food supply or maybe he just has a general ban on friendship, because when Kraglin caught Peter sitting on Gruhl’s lap like he used to with his grandpa back on Terra, he yanked Peter off his seat and scowled at the other man before marching Peter back to Captain’s quarters and locking him inside. The prick probably even snitched to Yondu too, because Gruhl kept his distance afterwards. Kraglin was a stickler for the rules like that, taking every opportunity to suck up to Captain. He and Yondu always liked seeing Peter suffer, probably figured his tears seasoned the meat.

“I said be back at 900 hours. Gruhl knew the rules and the consequences of disobedience.” Trailing Yondu, Peter can’t see his face, but his expression turns dark and threatening, causing crewmembers in the surrounding area to take alternate circuitous routes back to their stations to avoid his ire. “We can’t afford to wait ‘til his highness deigns to grace us with his presence. We got a schedule t’ keep.”

“If we just wait 15 minutes…” Peter reasons.

“I said no, Quill. If we wait 15 minutes now, then next time, we have to wait 30, then an hour, and before ya know it, we’re waiting the whole day when there’s money to be made,” Yondu replies, plopping down into the Captain’s chair.

“But–“

“But what, boy?” Now facing Peter, Yondu’s murderous expression leaves no room for argument. Unfortunately, Quill doesn’t yet know danger when he’s staring it straight in the face, or he doesn’t care.

“He’s my friend.” Even to his own ears, Peter sounds small and stupid. It’s a weak excuse, weaker still considering his audience. Yondu never cares about Peter’s happiness.

“He weren’t yer friend,” Yondu says simply in a brusque voice that Peter’s too green to understand as kind. Peter also doesn’t catch the past-tense. Yondu’s particular brand of creole always played loose with his verbs anyway. He looks past Quill, over at the crew, making eye contact with each in his sweep. The kid may have missed his captain’s cues, but Yondu broadcasts the message to every other person there, loud and clear. Certain deviancies will not be tolerated on the Eclector, and one of these is skinny, noisy, and Terran-shaped.

Later, looking through one of the Eclector’s back windows, Peter pouts as he watches the planet shrink to a pin before disappearing altogether. Yondu is a callous asshole whose casual cruelty endangered them all. No one is exempt from his rigid rules.

Or so Peter thought.

Pinkerly was an established client, someone Yondu hadn’t even had to threaten with his arrow to get a fair price the last time they did business. He had been confident in the relative safety of this simple meeting and so had brought along a 15-year-old Quill to show him the negotiating side of the business. However, what started as a standard client meet had turned into a Kree ambush complete with a Centaurian battle slave and yaka arrow. When the first whistle (not originating from Yondu) had taken out Prih to his right, Yondu pulled Quill by his collar, throwing him against Oblo’s chest behind.

Yondu takes cover and whistles out his own arrow, dueling against the other Centaurian’s yaka, blocking and attacking in chaotic rhythms, red streams sizzling and flashing in mid-air. Yondu can hold his own in a fight, but the presence of another Centaurian complicates things, occupying his arrow, distracting him from taking down other enemies. They effectively neutralize each other. Luckily, Yondu isn’t alone. The Ravagers wield blasters and knives against those who dare double-cross them. In the middle of it all leaps Kraglin, slicing through blue and pink bodies in a feral frenzy. Kraglin is good with a blaster, but he prefers fighting like this, up close where he can smell the metallic tang of blood and the stench of fear mixed with halitosis and spilled guts. He likes to feel the soft firmness give way as he cuts into throats and bowels alike… likes the warm splatter against his skin, personal like a kiss. You don’t get that from any blaster.

The Ravagers fall back and reach their M-ships, short some men. Yondu easily spots Quill’s curly ginger hair, but a certain lanky Xandarian is missing.

“Where’s Obfonteri?” Yondu demands.

“Think he’s still back there, Cap’n. We gotta move,” Retch says, out of breath. It’s the smart thing to do, the right thing.

Yondu doesn’t hesitate in his decision. Damn the consequences. He doesn’t care what it looks like. To Oblo, he orders, “Go, and take the boy back. I’ll catch up later.” Then, he turns and runs back into the fray.

When Quill sees Yondu again on the Eclector, he has a bleeding Kraglin draped over his shoulder, dark blue leaking down over his coat and leaving a trail of drops in his wake as he carries him out of his M-ship. Yondu deposits his limp burden on a gurney and follows him to medbay, haranguing the couriers at every bump jostling their cargo. Covered in wet ragged abrasions and a worrying amount of blood (an unknown amount of it foreign), Kraglin weaves in and out of consciousness, weakly clutching his right lower-mid torso against a blackened blaster wound. From experience, Quill knows that’s roughly where Xandarians have their equivalent of a Terran heart.

“Don’t ya fuckin’ let ‘im die!” Yondu barks at Doc, practically breathing down his neck. “Else there won’t be enough left of ya t’ burn for the funeral.”

Once Kraglin is stabilized and unconscious, Quill sits at his bedside, ostensibly having brought his evening meal with him to eat in peace. His untouched stew cools and congeals to a thick consistency, a dull filmy grey skin forming across the surface.

If Quill was to classify his relationship with Kraglin, perhaps it would be “schoolyard bully and victim.” Kraglin could never resist a joke at Pete’s expense, and he often snickered in the background as Yondu terrorized the boy with ever-more-creative threats. But if pressed on the issue and possibly with an underage drink or two circulating his system, Peter might even describe them as “friends,” or as much as was possible amongst Ravagers.

Something blue and red skims along the edge of his periphery. Quill turns to find Yondu standing in the doorway, careful to avoid looking at his First Mate prone across the medbay cot.

“What are ya doin’ ‘ere, Quill?”

“Eating,” Quill lifts a spoon of lukewarm mystery slop to his mouth and swallows in such a way to minimize contact with his taste buds. He just barely masks his disgust as the bite slides down his throat intact in a cold, quivering lump and forms a brick of indigestion in his stomach. “… And you?”

“Checkin’ our supply of antibiotics,” Yondu responds casually. “Obfonteri’s runnin’ through them like water. Considerin’ cuttin’ him off and lettin’ him fight off infection on his lonesome.” It’s a rather thin excuse, and Quill’s not nearly stupid enough to believe him, at least not after what he witnessed.

“You went back for him,” Peter says slow and soft in wonderment, but to Yondu’s ear, it’s an accusation, a denouncement of sentiment read at his trial before being sent to the gallows.

Yondu doesn’t answer nor does he cuff the boy, which Quill takes as an invitation towards further commentary.

“I thought we don’t wait for anyone. We’re all expendable,” he continues, staring at Kraglin and idly stirring his spoon in his neglected dinner.

After a long pause during which Yondu calculates, evaluates, and discards any number of lies, he settles on the truth: “Obfonteri ain’t.”

Pete looks up at Yondu. _That’s new_. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy Kraglin’s alive, but… Why? Why did you risk your life to save his?”

The periodic beep and hum of machines monitoring Kraglin’s vital signs mask the subtle drip drip drip of IV fluid. How long had Yondu known the man? Hell, Kraglin couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than Quill is now when, skinny and desperate, he pulled a knife on Yondu after offering to suck his cock in a semi-private alley. Yondu had always been a sucker for baby blues, and the boy sure had a pretty set. It was a shame when he hit them hard enough to swell shut, obscuring Kraglin’s best feature. Still, the boy put up a good fight. He had grit even then, though he never did quite fill out despite regular meals. That hadn’t been the moment Yondu knew Kraglin’s worth, nor was it when they started fucking some time later, not even when it became regular. No. It had been after the trial, when Kraglin had stood on the bridge with a reduced but loyal crew and beat his fist twice to Yondu’s flame. He had held Yondu later that night, warm body pressed against Yondu’s back with blue head tucked tightly under his chin, stale breath fogging up the crystalline implant and fingers interlacing with his own.

Yondu crosses into the room and bends down to place a gentle hand on Kraglin’s shoulder.

“Because I felt like it.”

“Okay…” Peter supposes he may never understand his taciturn captain in this or any matters not involving earning credits or following orders.

“You’ll git it when yer older, I reckon,” Yondu tells him, watching the subtle rise and fall of Kraglin’s bandaged chest.

There’s a breathy whisper from the past tickling the back of Quill’s mind.

_Codebreaker_.

For the first time in a while, Peter wonders about the precise nature of Yondu’s banishment from the other Ravager clans. Had it been for a show of sentiment? Is that why Yondu is such a hard-ass about any hint of softness in his crew? He wisely declines to ask. Ravagers don’t pry into the pasts of others without receiving a deserved fist to the chin.

Still, it seemed some rules were made to be broken.

 

**Steal from everyone.***

Yondu thinks about it a minute longer, then amends: “But not from each other.” It’s not like they’re family, but he and Quill… well, they just do not do that to each other for reasons Yondu doesn’t want to contemplate. Unfortunately, Quill takes after Yondu a little too much, a fact Yondu mulls over after Quill goes missing with his four-billion-credit orb.

_That ungrateful little bastard._

This betrayal… It will not stand. He can’t have crew getting ideas about thwarting his will and disrupting the natural order of things. It’s rebellion. It’s insubordination. He’s going to have to kill Quill for this.

The thought drops a seed of rot in the pit of his stomach then blooms, unfurling black and ugly across his guts, making him nauseous.

The Chains. The Trial. The Banishment.

_Codebreaker._

Is this what Stakar felt when he–

 

* * *

 

_Not again,_ Nebula thinks as Gamora prises yet another prime assignment out from under her. Ronan had assigned her to retrieve the orb from some second-rate thief. It’s an easy assignment with excellent potential for high accolades upon completion.

“I’m a daughter of Thanos, just like you,” she protests. How is she ever going to prove her worth to their father when her sister sabotages her at every turn?

“But I know Xandar,” Gamora coolly bolsters her case.

Nebula, incensed, rages, “Ronan has already decreed that I–“

“Do not speak for me,” Ronan interrupts, glowering at Nebula. Nebula knows she lost the minute she met Gamora’s professional indifference with prickly irritation borne of years’ worth of impotent frustration. She dips her head in angry obedience. _Of course_.

Ronan turns to Gamora: “You will not fail.”

“Have I ever?”

 

* * *

 

The first time Peter meets Gamora, he thinks he might be in love.

Not real love of course, but the kind that serves as a preamble to a tumble in the sheets back on the Milano, when she’ll tell him her name and he’ll forget it one play-through of Awesome Mix Vol 1 later.

To his complete surprise, she swipes his score and kicks him in the stomach two minutes into their introduction. Damn it! _That_ usually comes after the fun part.

What follows is a three-way battle between Peter, Gamora, and the bounty hunting team of Rocket and Groot hell-bent on returning him to Yondu for summary execution. None are any closer to their goal when the four are arrested and sent to the Kyln, where they meet Drax the Destroyer and all escape via Rocket’s half-baked improvised plan which disappointingly did not feature an expensive prosthetic leg.

Sadly, this is the most time Peter has ever spent in the company of one woman since childhood. It’s just long enough for Gamora to burrow deep into Peter’s brain, ensuring he will never forget her.

Unfortunately, old habits die hard; so Peter attempts to charm the reserved assassin later on the balcony. Gamora’s eyes droop to half-lids as she sways to the soft beat of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” She feels butterflies in her stomach at his proximity. It’s an old feeling, long-forgotten, from the early days when everything was new, before seduction became part of the job. Vaguely, she wonders what it would be like to surrender to this feeling. Peter’s nose glances against hers as he moves in for a kiss.

Everything goes horribly wrong.

“No!” Gamora snaps out of her musically-induced daze, sliding her knife out of its holster as she holds the sharp blade against Peter’s neck.

“What the hell?” He screams, leaning as far back as he can to avoid getting nicked. Once again, Gamora defies expectations. This behavior is supposed to come later, _after_ he’s done something to deserve it.

“I know who you are, Peter Quill, and I am not some starry-eyed waif here to succumb to your… your pelvic sorcery!” How could she have forgotten herself? Luckily, Thanos had warned her against this tempting deception years before. She’s wise to Peter’s tricks, and he will not cloud her perception again. Gamora is better than that.

“That is not what is happening here,” he breathes out. Gamora is strong, stronger than Peter himself, but he recognizes damage when he sees it. It’s bone deep in this one, making Gamora unpredictable… dangerous. If Peter is smart, he’d leave well-enough alone.

No one has _ever_ accused Peter of being smart. He’s got the scars to prove it.

 

* * *

 

Gamora floats in the black void among the debris from her pod’s explosion. Sulfurous green-yellow gases steaming off the rotting Celestial head swirl behind her in a brilliant kaleidoscope of colors. Icicles spider-web across her exposed green skin. Rocket is the voice of reason in Peter’s head, telling him she’s a lost cause. She’s not dead yet, but she might as well be. There’s nothing they can do.

Quill never listens to that voice.

He slams on his comm, setting it to the common Ravager frequency: “Yondu! Yondu! This is Quill! My coordinates are 2-2-7-K-3-3-4.”

There’s that voice again telling him this is insanity. Even if Yondu is out there listening, even if he’s inclined to pick him up, and he miraculously manages to make it to their location in time… Gamora has a higher chance of survival in the vacuum of space than Peter has on the Eclector at this point.

Peter doesn’t care. Damn the consequences. “Just outside Knowhere. If you’re there, come get me. I’m all yours.”

He activates his mask, exits the pod, and jets to Gamora, grasping her limp, cold body. That voice is screaming again, but stops abruptly when he removes his mask and places it over Gamora’s mottled face. He feels her first breath of air shake through her body against his own.

The void is an icy-hot burn deep through his bones, igniting all his pain receptors in sparkling, popping spitfire. His blood boils, and he feels a freezing numbness quickly spread from his extremities inward. The light of the Eclector’s tractor beam is a welcome relief, and when they flop onto the metal grate within the intake valve, Peter coughs and gasps deep hungry breaths of air. The euphoria, that light giddiness accompanying their continued existence… it’s spinning and weightless and feels like falling. Where they touch, Peter’s senses spark as his body registers life. Having gone through this near-death experience together, he feels inexplicably bonded to Gamora, like he can trust her beyond what is prudent considering their short acquaintanceship. If Peter were prone to such flights of fancy, he’d say Gamora just took his breath away.

Is this what love feels like?

“Quill? What happened?” Gamora asks. She was floating in the void, absolutely certain Nebula had finally ended her, and then–

“I saw you out there. I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t let you die. I found something inside of myself. Something incredibly heroic,” Peter says. His ego will be the death of him.

Gamora rolls her eyes and sighs. _Was this really the time?_

Peter continues, “I mean, not to brag, but objectively…”

“Where’s the orb?” She asks. She has no patience for premature self-congratulatory pats on the back.

“It’s… Well, they got the orb.” Peter waffles.

“What?!”

The door creakily slides open as half a dozen blasters click in their direction.

“Welcome home, Peter.”

 

* * *

 

Yondu can’t believe it. His boy exposed himself to open space for some trollop he likely met less than a week ago? _Really, the boy is just too stupid to live,_ Yondu thinks heatedly as he tenderizes Quill’s lower abdomen with a series of strikes. What had Yondu been thinking taking in such a

Soft

_Thud!_

Reckless

_Smack!_

Brainless

_Thump!_

Ingrate

What happens now… it’s Quill’s own fault. The boy forced his hand. He whistles the yaka arrow to Quill’s throat.

“Sorry boy, but a Captain’s gotta teach his men what happens to those what cross him,” Yondu says, turning his back on the boy (no, the man) he raised from childhood, the closest thing he’ll ever have to a son. Quill has to die, and Yondu will be the one to put him down, but that doesn’t mean he must watch the killing blow as it’s delivered. Whether this makes him a coward or a monster, he can’t say. He’s grateful Peter doesn’t beg, even as his green woman falls apart. At least Yondu did that much right. He purses his lips.

“If you kill me now, you are saying goodbye to the biggest score you have ever seen,” Peter says calmly.

Yondu smiles as he seizes the out. Maybe Quill isn’t so dumb after all.

 

* * *

 

“I have a plan,” Peter insists. Yes, it’s only 12% of a plan, but he’s worked with less before and survived. Rocket, the brains of their rag-tag team, laughs at his thoughtless stupidity. Gamora agrees that it’s barely a concept, but she’s the first to stand up for Quill’s suicide pact of a partial plan followed by Drax and Groot.

Rocket knows when he’s beat. He sighs. “Now I’m standing. You all happy? We’re all standing up now. Bunch of jackasses, standing in a circle.”

The Battle for Xandar is one for the history books, where three factions: the Guardians, Ravagers, and NovaCorp, fought to save an entire planet from the demented Kree Accuser, Ronan. What gets lost in the statistics, in the  translation from lived experience to legend, are the individual dramas among the participants and those caught in the middle.

Nebula holds on to the platform of the Dark Aster, her body swinging over the abyss. If she falls, she will likely die.

Even after everything that’s happened, everything they’ve been through, Gamora holds out hope as she holds on to help her sister up and out of danger. “Nebula! Sister, help us fight Ronan. You know he’s crazy!”

Ronan is crazy for standing against Thanos, but then again, so is Gamora for standing against them both, for asking Nebula to join her, for thinking she can ever forgive her.

“I know you’re both crazy,” she says as she cuts off her own hand and falls to her fate. She lands on a Ravager M-ship, rips the pilot from his seat, and commandeers his craft to fly away from her foolish sister and her crazy plans. Maybe Nebula herself is a bit unhinged because for a fleeting moment back there, she had considered Gamora’s offer.

 

* * *

 

The Guardians had held an Infinity Stone and done what no group of mortals had ever done before: Survive. Now, the devil has come to collect his due.

“I may be as pretty as an angel, but I sure as hell ain’t one. Hand it over, son,” Yondu orders, the threat lingering in his voice should Peter refuse.

When Peter hands them the orb with a warning not to open it, Yondu takes one last pointed look at his son before heading back to the Eclector with his men.

“He’s going to be so pissed when he realizes I switched out the orb on him,” Peter says as he pulls out the real one encapsulating the Infinity Stone.

“He was going to kill you, Peter,” Gamora states. She can’t imagine what horrors Yondu had in store for his adopted son. Even if she had given Thanos the stone in the end, her adoptive father would have killed her for such a betrayal by flaying the skin from her back with a dull spoon.

“Oh I know, but he’s about the only family I have.” An errant memory rises to the surface unbidden. _Ya have to hold the needle steady-like, and push the thread through the eye. Yer a small runt with small fingers. Shouldn’t be too hard,_ Yondu told him when he was still new. _Now, tie a knot at the end and stitch like this._ With nimble fingers, he weaves the needle in and out of the tough leather of Quill’s child-sized jacket as he sews on the ubiquitous Ravager flame patch. He hands it to Peter to complete the task. The finished product is irregularly executed, the stitches crooked and unevenly spaced, but it’ll hold. _This marks ya as one of us, Quill. A Ravager._

Now, he can’t go back. Ever.

“No,” Gamora places her right hand over the orb while her left envelops Peter’s hand from below. “He wasn’t.”

Gamora looks at Peter with a touch of fondness as her delicate fingers intertwine with his own.

In the end, all of them… they each had a choice, and they had chosen each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The problem with doing a story such as this is that Peter and Gamora's meeting and team formation already happened in GotG1. I tried to not dwell too much on material already available in the movies and the stuff that is there I tried to make it fresh with character insights based on their imagined histories. Let me know how I did in the comments.


	4. Now He’s Gone, I Don’t Know Why

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter tries to seduce Gamora with limited success. GotG2 happens, and Gamora and Kraglin have a heart-to-heart.

**17ish Years Earlier**

“Fuck!” Yondu curses, pushing off against Kraglin’s chest as they scramble to arrange themselves in a less compromising position on the bed.

“But… but you both are…” Peter stutters haltingly, face furiously red as he averts his eyes from the carnal scene before him to safer, more-neutral territory above. He had snuck into Captain’s quarters to retrieve his confiscated cassette tape during Yondu’s sleep cycle when he stumbled on the two of them in flagrante. At least they had the decency to cover their glistening nether regions from Peter’s view with a sheet in the aftermath.

Yondu’s face adopts a steely look. No boy of his insinuates _that_. “Are what? Men? Don’t tell me ya buy into that load o’–“

“No! Unfeeling sociopaths.” Peter is looking at the ceiling. He closes his eyes and rubs them with one hand, but he can still see the image burned into his retinas of Kraglin naked and thrusting on top of the closest thing he’s ever had to a father. He shudders, trying to process this new information. He figures he can deal with it if only this one thing is true.

“This… this is just sex, right? Like, sometimes you guys get horny and use each other to get off. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. You aren’t actually _together_ -together,” he asks in a strangled tone. His whole retrospective of his childhood, his entire worldview, need not completely change.

Love is rhythmic and happy and beautiful, like in his mother’s songs and in old Terran TV serials. Love can’t possibly be this… this horrible, this ugly, this… sticky. Oh God, the smell! Peter needs time to process. He needs to sit down, but the only places to do so are likely contaminated with…. NOPE. Not thinking about it. Yondu has never wiped down a surface in his life. Ergo, Peter can’t touch anything in this cabin ever again.

“Don’t ya dare tell us what we ain’t, boy,” Yondu warns.

“And next time, knock first if ya don’t want an eyeful,” Kraglin adds. “Shit, you’re what? 17? 18? You should know better’n ta barge into another man’s private space. ‘S rude, s’what it is.”

“Well Sor-ry, I didn’t realize you were fucking each other consistently, or more specifically, that _you,_ ” Quill, still looking away, points an accusatory finger in Kraglin’s general direction, “were fucking _him_.” It sweeps to Yondu.

“Wha’s that suppose ta mean?” Yondu snarls, pre-emptively bristling at the thought that Quill might think he’s weak based on his sexual preferences.

“Not surprising; you were always slow on the up take,” Kraglin lobs back, but he’s grinning. The asshole is enjoying this. Yondu cuffs his first mate on the back of the head. It’s not funny. Kraglin disagrees.

“I’ll… I’ll just leave you to it then,” Peter says meekly as he turns and exits the room, cassette tape forgotten. It’ll be a while (possibly never) before he can look either man in the eye again.

“So… where were we?” Kraglin says, placing a hand on Yondu’s chest and applying gentle pressure down. Yondu slaps it away.

“Ain’t in the mood no more.”

 

* * *

 

**Present Day**

That scandalous incident had kicked-off the longest self-induced dry spell Quill had ever had up until the Guardians moved into the Milano.

It had been three months, and Peter still hadn’t so much as kissed Gamora, or any woman for that matter. Sure, he flirted with any attractive female-presenting alien who crossed his path as was his nature, but he hadn’t acted on any of it. One look at Gamora, and he knew doing so would backslide all of the gruelingly-slow progress he had made with her. While generally impatient and impulsive, Peter could wait if the end result was something he really wanted, and he desperately wanted her. Unfortunately, he had underestimated the control Gamora possessed over her own libido. In his vanity, he didn’t even consider she may not desire him in that way or that she had fairly substantial sexual hang-ups to work through on her own.

“Peter, can you give me some sugar?” Gamora says, pouring milk into her morning coffee.

 _Hell yes._ Peter thinks as he passes her the requested container.

Oh yeah, she definitely wanted him, too. Gamora just needed some incentive to act on her obvious attraction, just a little push in the right direction.

“What are you doing?” Gamora asks flatly one morning after night cycle, arms crossed and eyebrow raised.

“Hm? Oh, only my daily stretches,” Peter answers nonchalantly, bracing against the hull of the ship to lean into a calf stretch. He can’t believe it’s come to this, but if his usual tactics weren’t working, he might as well show off the goods so Gamora can see _all_ that he’s offering her.

“Why are you wearing that?” Gamora indicates his borderline-indecent attire. He’s shirtless, and his shorts are tight enough to outline his bulge in rather stunning high-definition detail, leaving very little to the imagination.

“I have no idea what you are insinuating. This is what I always wear when I’m lounging around the Milano,” Peter moves to a standing position and easily links his hands behind his back in a back shoulder stretch. It has the dual purpose of puffing out his pectoral muscles and showing off his impressive flexibility. “Anyways… like what you see?”

Gamora rolls her eyes, but before she can respond–

“I am Groot?” Cockblocker #3 tentatively asks from the open doorway.

 _Damn it!_ Peter thinks. The last thing he needs is more comments from the peanut gallery.

“Naw, Groot. His clothes ain’t tight ‘cause he’s getting fat. He’s just stuffing himself into tinier outfits. I’m a fifth his size and even I couldn’t pull off them shorts.” Cockblocker #1 replies. Peter shrinks a little under their scrutiny. He worked hard for his body. Does he really look like he gained weight?

“It is a rather obscene display. Quill, are you in need of coverings with which to clothe your loins? Would you like to borrow one of my pants? You should really consider doing laundry _before_ you are completely out of clean clothes,” Cockblocker #2 chimes in with a rather-fatherly assessment of the situation. Peter does not appreciate the advice. His real sort-of-dad would have just told him his leathers were not in need of laundering until they were crackly-crusty and to stop preening like some fuckin’ fancy asshole.

But really, his greater issue is that with Rocket, Drax, and Groot around, seducing an already-aloof Gamora was proving to be a near-impossible task.

“Guys, I have pants.” Peter indicates the red leathers he had carelessly shed and tossed into the corner.

“You’ve been wearing those every day, and they haven’t been washed for at least two weeks!” Rocket grimaces. The stink is bad enough that the other humies are beginning to notice, but to Rocket with his heightened sense of smell, it reeks like someone poured curdled milk in a gym sock and left it in a humid environment to bake in the sweaty sun for a month.

“Which means I’ll wash them next week. Really guys, I know my hygiene habits are… unconventional, but I just can’t wait two months between washings like everybody else,” Peter says exasperated. It was bad enough when the Ravagers heckled him about his constant grooming, but the Guardians were supposed to be different. They didn’t have to make him feel like such a freak.

“You think the problem is too-frequent washing?” Rocket’s eyes bug out. And people accused _Rocket_ of being the filthy animal.

“Peter… most people shower and clean their clothing more often than that,” Gamora can’t believe she has to explain this to a full-grown adult.

“I am surprised at all of you,” Drax frowns, shaking his head.

“Thank you, Drax. See, Drax gets it,” Peter dips his head towards Drax in appreciation. At least one of this lot is acting like an actual friend.

“Quill’s musk is rather pungent, but it is considered impolite to point it out.” Really, they should all be ashamed of themselves.

Quill closes his eyes and covers his face with one hand. Why is he doomed to be constantly surrounded by judgmental assholes?

“I am Groot.”

“Well, La-dee-freakin’-da. Not all of us smell pine fresh all the time without showering!” Rocket translates.

 

* * *

 

“This li’l doohickey ‘ere plays Terran music?” Yondu prods the small plastic box in a junker’s shop with a chipped claw.

“Yes, the Zune is the latest tech to come out of that primitive planet. Everyone on Terra has one. It holds over 300 native songs.”

“That right?” Yondu picks up the Zune, turning it over in his hand. It’s smaller and lighter than Quill’s Walkman, which boasts a grand total of 12 songs. The headphones are more compact, too, and can be shared, unlike Quill’s orange contraption.

The vendor knows when he’s on the verge of a sale. “If you’re interested, we can discuss the price–”

“Yeah, about that,” Yondu whistles his arrow from its holster. “I was thinkin’ I could git a discount…”

Later on the Eclector, Yondu pulls the Zune from his jacket to deposit into his bedside drawer.

“What ya got there, Cap’n?” Kraglin looks over at his new trinket with interest. He notes it’s rather plain for Yondu’s taste, which leans towards the shiny and colorful.

“Upgrade to Quill’s Walkman. This Zune has 300 of them Terran songs he likes so much. When Quill comes back, he’s goin’ ta be workin’ off that Orb stunt fer the rest o’ his life. No way he’ll be able to buy this off me, so if he wants it, I’m goin’ to make ‘im scrub our personal bogs with that weird prissy teeth-brush o’ his.”

Kraglin crosses his arms, sighs, then says heatedly, “Why ya gettin’ anythin’ fer that traitor? After what he pulled, he ain’t comin’ back if he knows what’s good fer ‘im.”

“Watch yer tongue, Obfonteri, unless yer lookin’ to git it pierced,” Yondu warns. Quill was a point of contention between them that had been brewing for a long time, ever since Yondu opened the decoy Orb and found that worthless Terran tchotchke now adorning his console, maybe even longer if they were being honest with themselves, but the Orb had been the breaking point.

Kraglin thins his mouth into a curt frown. Then, he simply bundles up his pillow and walks out of their shared quarters to bed down with the crew instead. Yondu doesn’t watch him leave. Instead, he flicks through the screen of the Zune, selects a random song, and presses play.

 

* * *

 

Later, they would argue whether the instigating event had been Peter’s petty arrogance over flying privileges or Rocket’s equally senseless theft of the Anulax batteries, but really, the seeds leading to the death of Peter’s father had been sown much earlier.

It started with Rocket’s discovery of a press release on the intergalactic holo-feed.

“Hey, it looks like the Sovereign caught your sister stealing some batteries. If we get her back, she’s worth a bundle on Xandar for that whole Ronan fiasco,” Rocket informs the group.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…” Peter peers over at Gamora, carefully observing her reaction to the news.

“We are bounty hunters, and Nebula is just another bounty,” she says resolutely. She has made her decision. The Guardians are her family now. Thanos and his ilk are nothing to her anymore, only a distant bad memory.

“All right! Let’s get paid!” Rocket enters in the coordinates for the Sovereign home world.

They broker a deal, trading their services fighting the Abilisk for a transfer of Nebula’s imprisonment. The ensuing space battle leads to a crash landing on Berhert and an introduction to Peter’s biological father, Ego.

Peter is skeptical at first, but at Gamora’s insistence, he opens himself up to the lonely god and finds everything he thinks he’s ever wanted. Under Ego’s guidance, he closes his eyes, concentrates, and calls forth the light, shaping it into a ball to play catch with his father. It’s all he’s ever dreamed it would be.

Disappointingly, Gamora doesn’t get it. _Something about this place doesn’t feel right_ , she insists. _You’re jealous_ , he replies.

“I finally found my family. Don’t you understand that?” He’s frustrated. Why can’t she be happy for him?

Gamora is hurt: “I thought you already had.”

 

* * *

 

Standing before the burning wreakage of her M-ship, Nebula finally beats Gamora, achieving her long-coveted victory, but instead of euphoria, the feeling in her gut is hollow, unsatisfying. Holding her sister’s throat in her hand, sword ready to strike, she throws both down. It’s what she’s been waiting for, what she’s been dreaming of for years, but she can’t do it.

Instead, they argue over trivial things, like whether this victory counts (it does, according to Nebula), who saved who’s life (it’s a draw), and who even nursed this stupid rivalry to begin with (they each accuse the other). Finally, Nebula can’t take it anymore, so she screams her truth.

“You were the one who wanted to win, and I just wanted a sister!” Breathing hard, Nebula turns away from Gamora, “You were all I had. But you were the one who needed to win.”

Facing her again, Nebula accuses, “Thanos pulled my eye from my head, and my brain from my skull, and my arm from my body… because of you.”

The fire shines off Nebula’s prosthetics. At this point, she’s mostly metal and synthetics… artificial, largely indestructible, with her shattered limbs self-repairing and whirring back into place after their battle.

Sometimes, Gamora wonders about that soft, blue girl from long ago. Exactly how much is left in the hard shell of steel and circuitry standing before her. There’s certainly still some organic matter fused to metal (her right eye, some skin, a bit of brain not yet converted to digital) but Nebula had been dismantled slowly, replaced piece by piece, in such a way that complicated the question of her identity, of her originality. At what point will the person before her cease to be her sister and become an automaton constructed in her likeness. For Gamora… Never. Nebula is Theseus’s Paradox made woman, complicated by memory and history and sentience–

But she’s still her sister.

 

* * *

 

Quill is down there on that jackass planet of a father, and Stars know what has happened, if his boy is even still alive. How long had Ego kept his other children before doing who-knows-what to them? Whatever he did resulted in their death and a subsequent request for yet another child. Yondu gives himself a mental shake. No. Quill’s strong and wilier than the others had been. He’s not dead yet. And as long as there is still a chance, Yondu isn’t going to give up on him.

He marches forward to join the rat and twig in his M-ship for an ill-advised rescue mission. With his crew dead and the Eclector diminished, he doesn’t have to hide the depth of his sentiment from anyone anymore… except maybe himself. Really, he’s got nothing left to lose.

Kraglin reaches out to touch his shoulder from behind. Yondu turns to face him and those apologetic blue eyes.

Correction: He’s got significantly less to lose, but everything non-Quill-related he cares about will be up here, where it’s relatively safe. Still, he should make some last-minute arrangements.

“Obfonteri, stay ‘ere. We may need an extraction, and if I don’t make it out… I want ya to look after Quill.”

“Cap’n–” He’s about to protest, but whether it’s about the practical decision to split up or the sentimental one to permanently babysit Quill, Yondu doesn’t wait to find out.

“I know it ain’t what we agreed to all them years ago, and it ain’t an order but think of it as a final request.” Yondu says, looking away from Kraglin. He swerves his red eyes back to scrutinize the other man, failing to hide the desperation behind his gaze, “I’m trustin’ ya to take care o’ my boy. Ya think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir,” Kraglin pounds his chest twice over the Ravager flame, his eyes glassy with unfallen tears. “And Cap– Yondu, I… I…” Even now, facing Yondu’s probable death, Kraglin chokes on the words.

Yondu closes the distance between them, a tight set to his jaw and a determined look in his eye. When he crushes against Kraglin, roughly elbowing him in the ribs and knocking his elevated crest against his nose, Kraglin doesn’t fight back. He knows he deserves worse, but he hopes Yondu won’t break anything too vital now that they don’t have an onboard medic. It takes him a full minute to realize his attack is simply an unpracticed hug. Yondu is tense muscle and awkward angles, limbs crooked more for a sparring hold than affection, but Kraglin settles into the embrace just the same.

“I know, Kraglin. Me too.” Yondu’s voice is low and hoarse, sandpapery rough to Kraglin’s ears. With calloused fingers twisting into the back of his mohawk, Yondu pulls Kraglin’s head down to touch his brow and nose to his own. They share the same rusty breath before Yondu extricates himself from their awkward embrace and heads towards his M-ship where Rocket and Groot wait.

 _He’s coming back. Cap’n has survived worse._ Kraglin tells himself. He’s almost convincing.

 

* * *

 

It’s over.

In the wake of Ego’s death, Peter stands in his crumbling center. The light, his immortality, dissipates from his hands, and he waits, expecting to die.

He’s saved from his fate by a speeding blue angel, hurtling up through the air.

“He may have been yer father, boy, but he wasn’t yer daddy,” Yondu tells Quill as they break through the surface of the collapsing planet known as Ego. Yondu looks up towards the swiftly darkening sky, calculating how much time they have until they exit the dissipating atmosphere, entering the void. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he has neglected to tell Quill up until that moment.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do none of it right… I’m damn lucky yer my boy.”

The aero-rig – It will have to be enough. Enough to demonstrate the depth of sentiment he’d felt towards his son that he’d never allowed himself to show before. He attaches it to Quill’s jacket and activates the atmospheric netting.

“What?” Quill breathes out. He doesn’t understand yet, but he will. Yondu smiles as they breach the stratosphere, then he turns his face upward, facing his death head-on. Quill looks back at the disintegrating planet below, terrible realization setting in slow and steady. He screams in heartrending incredulity. Yondu… his dad had always pulled through, even when the situation was most dire. It can’t end like this, so final and quiet-like.

Even in his last moments, Yondu tries to comfort Quill. _S’okay, son… I’m okay with this_ , Yondu would say if he could speak. Instead, he pats his boy’s cheek as his eyes freeze over and he slips from consciousness and this life altogether.

When Kraglin and the Guardians pick them up, Quill is incoherent and crying, latched onto the frozen corpse of the man who raised him. Drax pries him off and holds him back gently in his too-strong arms, shushing him quietly as Peter openly weeps. Kraglin collapses in front of his Captain, placing shaky arms around his limp form. He’s too still, freezing cold, and impossibly smaller. Kraglin knows there’s nothing they can do for him now. Captain’s gone.

After a quiet stretch broken only by Peter’s ragged breathing as he attempts to compose himself, Kraglin says, “I’ll prepare the body. Cap’n should have a proper funeral.” His voice cracks, but nobody calls him on it.

After carrying Yondu to the engine room and placing him on a stretcher over a slab, they leave him with Kraglin to gather Yondu’s favorite trinkets. Groot sets out to grow flowers to place on the body.

“We should give him some time alone with Yondu,” Peter says when they are out of earshot.

“Are you sure we can trust him?” Gamora asks. She doesn’t know Kraglin that well, but Rocket had told them about the mutiny. Mutineers were rarely trustworthy people.

“He and Yondu had a… a thing. I’m sure he would like to say goodbye privately,” Peter explains quietly. Regardless of what had transpired between the two since Peter left, he remembers Kraglin as a loyal First Mate during Peter’s entire 26-year tenure with the Ravagers. He wouldn’t begrudge the man a final goodbye.

Kraglin will take great care in preparing Yondu’s body, while Peter plans his eulogy.

Ego and Yondu… Peter considers the two men: the man who fathered him and his father.

The former had been charming and handsome like Peter imagined he would be, powerful and important, too, like Peter had hoped. Ego even loved his mother… but not enough, not more than the expansion, that disturbingly beautiful vision Peter had witnessed in the moments before Ego casually confessed to his mother’s murder. He had attacked him then, and when Ego squished his Walkman, he killed his mother all over again.

The latter… well, Yondu was rough and abusive, frightening and ugly as sin. He beat Peter, threatened him often as well. But in the end, Yondu gave up everything he had, everything he ever worked for and wanted, his version of Ego’s expansion, to ensure Peter’s safety.

Peter recalls when he was still small, he had contracted the Merrokush flu. Yondu had gotten right up into his small red face and cussed him out, as if Quill was being difficult on purpose for getting sick and could improve through sheer will alone if only he tried hard enough. Yondu’s large blue hand, usually too warm to the touch, had been cool on Peter’s burning forehead as he swore softly at Doc. _Fuck. Can’t we just dump ‘im in the snow of some polar wasteland? Cool ‘im down a bit?_ Still… Yondu had sat with him until his fever broke.

How do you make sense of such a man?

 

* * *

 

They stand together now at Yondu’s funeral, seven attendees around the body plus one on the sideline.

Gazing at his father, thinking of the signs he missed and everything left unsaid, Peter ends his eulogy: “Sometimes that thing you’re searching for your whole life… it’s right there by your side all along. You don’t even know it.”

Peter means his father, but Gamora looks at Nebula, her sister who had been her family for longer than anyone else. It’s not too late for them. So, when Nebula leaves the funeral early, Gamora follows.

“Nebula… I was a child like you. I was concerned with staying alive until the next day, every day. And I never considered what Thanos was doing to you. I’m trying to make it right. There are little girls like you… across the universe who are in danger,” Gamora’s voice is tremulous as she walks towards her sister. She offers, “You can stay with us and help them.”

“I will help them by killing Thanos,” Nebula says with certainty.

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Gamora whispers. Nebula turns to leave, but Gamora grabs her arm. Nebula spins around, fist clenched for a punch, anticipating an attack, but Gamora doesn’t even meet her challenge with an answering block. She pulls Nebula into a stiff hug, wondering if this is the last time she’ll see her.

“You will always be my sister.”

Nebula doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, only raising her arms to return the embrace briefly before roughly peeling away to exit the Third Quadrant, leaving behind Gamora and the weight of those lost years.

 

* * *

 

After they ease Yondu’s body into the engine of the Third Quadrant, the Guardians disperse.

“Pete!” Kraglin calls out to him. “Cap’n found this for you in a junker shop. Said you’d come back to the fold someday.” He holds out the Zune, the one he had found while preparing the body. He explains its significance to the boy. Yondu had wanted Quill to have it, and Kraglin is not about to deny him anything.

Peter accepts the music player, a timely replacement for the one destroyed by Ego, as a final gift from his real father.

“Wait.” Peter hands Kraglin the yaka arrow. “Rocket grabbed the pieces, and reassembled them. I think Yondu would want you to have it.”

Kraglin chokes up as he holds out the arrow reverently across his open palms. “Thanks…Cap’n.”

The final gift, the one for Yondu, had come in the form of a full Ravager funeral. As the colors erupt across the trail of Yondu’s ashes, Kraglin’s jubilation breaks and washes over him at Yondu’s final redemption, the one thing he sought his entire life. Kraglin beats his fist to the Ravager flame, saluting his Cap’n one final time. He hopes Yondu picks up their fallen compatriots on his path to the afterlife, lighting their way through the void.

 

* * *

 

The Third Quadrant is small, but there are so few of them that each can have their own room. When (or if) they decide to hire on a full crew, they will need to share, but for now, each can enjoy the uncommon luxury of having a space to call their own without compromising décor, taste, or sleep schedule.

Kraglin hates it.

The first night without Yondu, Kraglin lies awake half the sleep cycle before falling into a fitful sleep clutching a pillow in the space where Yondu usually slept. He wakes up freezing, blankets pulled to the side and over the edge. It’s harder when there isn’t a counterweight pulling just as hard in the opposite direction. The pillow below his face is suspiciously damp. Kraglin attributes it to cold sweats.

The second night is just as hard, as is the third and every night for the next several weeks.

 

* * *

 

There had been a worrying rattle in the belly of the Third Quadrant, on the starboard-side hull towards the back. Kraglin was used to the sounds of the Eclector as a whole, knew which creaking clanking sounds could be largely ignored and which spelled trouble for its space-faring crew, but the Quadrant was a smaller ship, a fraction of the original he knew so well. The noises, both benign and malignant, echoed differently in its reduced bulk and had to be investigated and relearned until it too felt like a predictable old friend. Presently, he has removed a bit of the side paneling in the suspect area to discover and fix the source.

He doesn’t hear footsteps, but he knows she’s there all the same, the shadow he acquired in the weeks since Yondu’s funeral.

“I ain’t goin’ to off myself, if that’s what yer worried about,” he calls out, still facing the tangled piping of the Quadrant’s innards. He doesn’t turn to face her.

Gamora pauses. She considers denying it. Her training with Thanos had made a good liar out of her, but she suspects it won’t work. Dishonest folk are harder to fool after all.

“I am just concerned. Peter told me you and Yondu were… close.” Gamora has always been diplomatic about other people’s secrets.

“Pete never did learn to shut his damn mouth.”

“That may be true, but Peter… he’s lost a lot of people recently, and I would hate to see him lose one more.”

“Well, it ain’t goin’ ta be me if I can help it. Cap– Yondu knew he weren’t comin’ back, and that asshole made me promise to watch out fer the brat. So that’s what I’m goin’ ta do.” _It’s the least I can do._ Kraglin spots the loose rattling pipe. It’s not a severe issue, won’t cause fatal decompression or sudden break-up of the ship, but he pulls out a wrench from his work kit to tighten it. Gamora leans up against the corridor wall next to the open panel.

“You’re planning to stay long-term, then? Peter will be pleased. I’m sure Yondu would be as well,” she says.

Kraglin sighs, but he continues his work. “You know, I never wanted ‘im to take that last job fer Ego after we found out what was happenin’ to all them kids we was deliverin’. Told ‘im to leave it be. Lick our wounds; move on; try to forget. We was already banned from the 99th. No goin’ back. We could’a just carried on takin’ small jobs and the jobs other clans wouldn’t touch. Piece it all together and made a life. But no. Yondu… he knew if we wasn’t goin’ ta get the kid, Ego’d only find someone else to do it. He wanted to save Pete. I didn’t. Never was the fatherin’ type.”

“You could have left.”

“Naw, Missy. You and me both know that was never an option.”

“It’s Gamora,” she pauses, then asks, “Was it worth it?”

“Pickin’ up Pete? Prob’ly, considerin’ he just saved the Galaxy. Again.”

“No, not that. Being with Yondu.” _Was it worth being vulnerable? The heartbreak?_ Peter is a sentimental idiot, willing to leap into the void for a woman he barely knows, trusting salvation to come from people he recently double-crossed. In other words, Gamora can’t trust his judgement. She simply has no confidence in his survival instincts. Kraglin is different. As a rough-hewn Ravager, he has the practicality and capacity for emotional detachment she understands.

Kraglin recalls aching ribs and split lips, sour breath and the shkt shkt shkt of leather against leather from the first punch to the last embrace. _Ya ain’t goin’ ta whistle me through if I touch ya, sir?_ He had asked. _Not if ya ain’t plannin’ ta stick me with that knife o’ yer’s when m’ guard is down,_ Yondu had answered. Much later, Cap’n declared _This don’t mean nothing_ , when he started letting him stay after. Something had shifted, slow but indisputable. Somewhere along the way, Yondu started sleeping in Kraglin’s presence and Kraglin stopped anticipating his fatal whistle. Their touches became non-bruising, bordering on gentle, and their smiles more genuine, but that desire, that greedy hungry want for more, never subsided.

 _I just gotta say it this one time, Cap’n… No matter how many times Quill betrays you, you protect him like none of the rest of us much matter!_ He had said, but what he meant was like Kraglin didn’t matter, like nothing he did, nothing they’ve been through added up to much when stacked up against one thankless brat. He had been wrong then… knew he was wrong almost immediately, even before they spaced his friends, before they locked up Cap’n and called the Kree to collect his bounty... before Cap’n looked at him with those sad but determined eyes and forgave him for it all, same as he had Quill…

Having finished his task, Kraglin reaches for the loose siding on the adjacent wall opposite Gamora to close up the exposed panel.

“We had damn near thirty years together, a lot of good times, some bad. Truth told; that’s more than I thought we’d ever have, more than I thought I’d even live as a whelp, but even if it had been a month, it would have been worth it.” He starts to bolt the sheet metal in place. “Hell, if I could do it over again, I would’ve changed that bit at the end obviously, but I’d‘ve also kissed that blue bastard earlier so we’d have more time. So, if yer after my advice: stop stallin’.”

“I’m not stalling.”

“See, now that’s funny,” Kraglin laughs, but it’s a hollow, empty sound rattling in his chest. “You might be able to fool Pete. Kid never was too bright, but self-delusion ain’t a good look on ya, Gamora.” He directs his watery blue gaze at her then. Gamora feels emotionally naked, in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s a decidedly unpleasant feeling.

“How are repairs coming?” She diverts attention to Kraglin’s primary task.

“She’s an old girl, but the Third Quadrant’s the sturdiest part o’ the Elector. Self-sufficient, even when detached from the whole. Has to carry on as it were.”

Kraglin knows the feeling.

 

* * *

 

Peter hasn’t been sleeping well for weeks due to residual nightmares. He dreams of Ego killing his mother, of unceasing burning spikes, of Yondu suffocating and freezing in his arms…

He stands in his room, listening to the Zune and leaning against the reinforced glass of the porthole into the great black beyond, when he feels a light hand on his shoulder. He pulls the headphones out of his ear as he turns to face Gamora.

“You are an idiot, Peter Quill. You are arrogant, foolhardy, insufferable, and one day you may kill us all,” Gamora says evenly. Peter scans his memory, trying to figure out what he has done to inspire such a diatribe. He can’t think of anything… well, nothing _recent_ at least.

She continues, “But I like you. I like you far more than is prudent for people in our line of work.”

Peter stares at her dumbly, mouth dropping open. That had been… unexpected. “So, you’re admitting we have an unspoken thing.”

“No, I just spoke, so it is not unspoken anymore,” Gamora states. Peter really needs to keep up, or this is going to be a lot more awkward and take a lot longer than need be.

Peter stumbles though his words, “I… um… I like you, too. If we’re going to start being honest with each other, I’m a bit surprised at… at all this. I guess I shouldn’t ask too many questions…”

“Yes, that would be–“

“… But did something happen? Why are you suddenly…” Peter tries, and fails, to find the words. He doesn’t even know why he is questioning this lucky break. It’s what he’s always wanted, and normally he would jump at the chance, yet this is Gamora. If he takes advantage of Gamora’s situation (whatever it may be), then she’ll not only snap him like a dry twig, but it will be the end of their makeshift family as well.

“Peter, caring about someone, it makes you weak… but I don’t want to die tomorrow or next week without ever knowing what it feels like.” She kisses him then, pushing him up against the glass, cool and unyielding, behind him. Peter’s eyes widen in surprise before sliding closed.

He can barely think. Butterflies fill his chest to bursting. His brain is on fire, and heat pools downwards. He wants to run away. He wants to stay forever.

Peter breaks the kiss, breathing hard. He has something important to tell her.

“This is my first time,” he says, low and serious.

Gamora snorts. “Really Peter? I thought we were going to be honest with each other.” She is not in the mood for his odd sense of humor.

“It’s the first time it’s really meant anything,” he clarifies, his eyes soft with a touch of vulnerability.

 _Oh_.

Gamora looks down, picking at a loose thread on her wristband.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just thought you should know,” Peter says quickly, taking in Gamora’s suddenly-timid demeanor. “No pressure!”

 _Damn it!_ Two minutes in, and he’s already fucking this up.

Gamora pulls him into another kiss, one hand on his shoulder and the other massaging the base of his head, lightly grazing the short hairs there. Peter wraps his arms around her, hands settling on her lower back before gravitating lower.

When she pulls him down onto the bed, he obediently follows, shedding his clothes with careless abandon.

This feeling… it’s a fuller, truer version of the ones that came before when he was in a similar situation with any number of women, like his sepia world has erupted into full technicolor glory.

Afterwards, Peter slips into deep dreamy sleep, satisfied and happier than he has been in a while. He doesn’t dream of lonely planets and being impaled on electric tentacles, nor does he dream of ice forming over blue skin and his father’s final embrace. Instead, tonight, he dreams sweetly of bright green skin and soft breaths against his skin as he curls into the woman he loves.

_Shrk!_

Peter abruptly wakes to pain and panic as he registers the slim body tensed on top of him, pinning him down. A green forearm presses against his neck, stopping his breath, while a knifepoint hovers, sharp and glinting, inches from his right eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to quickly touch on the events of GotG2 but included mostly new content and missing scenes. Like last chapter, I needed to address some canon because it develops the relationship between Nebula & Gamora and Yondu & Peter. Please leave a comment, letting me know how I did. 
> 
> Also, final update should happen pretty quickly. I wrote Chapter 4 and 5 together, so the next chapter is about 85% done.


	5. He Would Always Laugh and Say, Remember When We Used to Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is not okay, but it’s a start.

**17ish Years Earlier**

Just on the outskirts of his peripheral vision, Kraglin can see Pete staring at him again. Pete has been doing that a lot since… the incident. When Kraglin looks over to meet his eye, he quickly averts his gaze elsewhere, sometimes with minor consequences. Taserface had cuffed him a couple times for “making eyes” at his ugly mug before the boy learned to just look at his feet.

Pete doesn’t try to talk to him anymore, actively avoids him actually, and that’s fine by Kraglin. The kid finding out about him and Yondu meant less conversation with the Terran menace. If he had known the positive side effects of that revelation, he would have bent Yondu over Pete’s sleeping area and gone to town that first night, assuming Yondu didn’t whistle him through for mentally-scarring the brat.

As it stands, Yondu figures the kid is old enough now where seeing them together won’t cause any permanent damage. He opts to wait until the kid gets over it instead of doing something as ill-advised as talk to Pete about his _feelings_. That might actually permanently-scar the both of them: Yondu mentally and Peter physically.

Yet, looking at Pete try not to look at him cultivates a niggling something in the back of Kraglin’s brain and a dry feeling in his throat. He figures it’s maybe a residual hangover from chronic drinking, but it persists even after he abstains for a couple days, so he thinks maybe he’s dehydrated instead. When Kraglin finally realizes the cause, he curses.

Since when had he grown a conscience, and why did it dictate he _willingly_ talk to the brat?

Kraglin sneaks up behind Pete next time he’s alone. He would congratulate himself on a well-executed ambush, but it’s not that difficult when his quarry blasts music through headphones perpetually placed over his ears, deafening him to the outside world. He loops his arm around Pete’s neck, jerks it down, and knuckles the top of his head, messing his carefully-coiffed hair. (Really, who was he trying to impress with that?) Pete struggles against his captor at first, thinking maybe one of the less-favorable Ravagers has finally decided to take him out, but he stops when he recognizes the stick-skinny red-sleeved arm around him.

“What the hell, Kraglin!”

“Shit, Petey. You should really work on yer sit-uational awareness. Them headpieces… it’s a safety hazard is what it is.” Kraglin is just pointing out the error of his ways. Pete should be _thanking_ him for this lesson. Kraglin disengages from the headlock, slipping into a relaxed stance and laughing at the boy’s furious expression as Pete ducks out and runs fingers through his hair, trying to fix his mussed-up mane. It doesn’t work.

“Fucker,” Pete says, glaring at Kraglin. Kraglin’s smirk nearly bursts from a second wave of snickering. Pete turns red, “That’s not what I meant!”

“Uh huh, sure, Pete,” Kraglin composes himself. He’s trying to have a _serious_ conversation right now, to resolve the weird tension between them. “You’ve been avoiding me ever since… you know.”

“I found out that you’ve been fucking Yondu,” Pete says. They might as well get it out in the open.

“Right. Anyways, I can tell ya got questions, so go fer it.” Kraglin crosses his arms. Might as well get this over with.

“So… How does it work with you two?”

“Hell, Pete. Didn’t you git the sex talk years ago? You really need a refresher?” Yondu had just recently started letting Quill accompany them to brothels. Sex can’t possibly be that much of a mystery to him anymore.

“No, not the sex, obviously. I’m still trying to scrub that out of my brain. I mean your…” Pete looks up at the ceiling and waves his hand in tight circles, trying to find the right word, “relationship, I guess. I mean, I thought… Well, Ravagers don’t give two shits about anyone. You’re not… I don’t know, maybe sleeping with him to–”

“I’m not fuckin’ Cap’n to git ahead. That ain’t how I earned m’ position.” Kraglin smacks Peter lightly on the back of the head. Just because he opened himself up to questions, doesn’t give Peter a free pass to ask stupid ones consequence-free. “I’m first mate ‘cause I git shit done.”

“Then what’s the appeal? He’s a gross–“

“Bein’ clean is overrated.”

“Old–“

“Ain’t that old. Only ‘bout 8 years older’n me give or take.”

“Mean bastard–”

“Who ain’t on this ship?”

“Who can kill you with a whistle.”

“Yeah… that’s kind’a hot,” Kraglin puts his hands in his pockets, and gives Peter a small dreamy smile. “So, ya understand, right?”

“I understand you’re crazy and have a death wish,” Peter says flatly. “When I fall in love, she’s going to be wonderful and nice and–“

“Boring.” Kraglin shakes his head. “No way that’s goin’ ta happen. When ya fall in love with a woman who can kill ya with her pinky, I’m goin’ ta laugh so hard,” Kraglin says, reaching up to ruffle Pete’s hair. Doesn’t matter that the kid is taller than Kraglin now; he’ll always be li’l Petey. Peter smacks his hand away.

“Oh yeah? You’re going to be extremely disappointed when she’s amazingly sweet.”

 

* * *

 

**Present Day**

“Fuck!” Peter says as Gamora comes back to herself and pulls back her knife from his eye and arm from his throat. She slips off him to settle at his side.

“I’m so sorry, Peter. It’s just… muscle memory at this point. I was trained to be hyper-aware of my surroundings, and I registered your movement as a threat in my sleep,” she says apologetically. She lies apart from him, staring at the ceiling.

“H- how have your prior lovers…” He coughs, rubbing his neck, lightly massaging his crushed windpipe.

“It’s never come up before. I’ve never actually spent the night with someone afterwards.”

Peter supposes he should feel honored, if he wasn’t so freaked out.

“So…” He really doesn’t know what to say.

“Maybe I should leave,” Gamora suggests. She’s already reaching for her shirt.

As much as Peter wants to live through the night, he wants to fall asleep (and stay asleep) in her arms even more, like in all those Terran romances that informed his childhood ideals of love. His dreams are not going to be thwarted by something so small as severe PTSD.

“No, no… It’s… It’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”

They don’t figure it out.

“Maybe we should put _all_ our weapons in the common room, yeah?” Peter suggests the third night, “The Quadrant is a safe place… mostly. The chances of you getting attacked here are miniscule, and if it does happen, I’ll protect you!”

Gamora quirks an eyebrow.

“… Or you’ll protect me; same difference. Point is no one’s going to get the drop on us. We’re a power couple, like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore,” Peter says confidently, picking up his blasters.

“I am not sure you understand that I cannot control my unconscious reactions,” she says, but she gathers her sword and various knives just the same.

“That’s why we are putting everything out of reach.” Peter adds a forgotten little sticker of a knife into her pile. He’s become well-acquainted with all her weapons, even the hidden ones, and not in the fun way either.

When they settle into bed, Peter drops off quickly. He is in that fuzzy space between wakefulness and deep sleep. He’s warm and happy and so comfortable when he rolls to place his arm lightly on the lithe body next to him…

_Smack!_

Peter reflexively covers his nose against the bursting sting as a knee strikes his groin with amazing precision considering the mostly-unaware state of his attacker. When Gamora fully wakes, she has Peter pinned facedown to the mattress, and he is frantically whispering, “wakeup wakeup wakeup.”

She quickly lets go and rolls off her paramour.

“Peter… I’m not sure this is working.”

“No… no…” he wheezes. “It’s fine… We’ll think of something else.”

Peter briefly considers wrapping Gamora in a straight-jacket, but he doesn’t think she’d appreciate the rather-kinky suggestion. Besides, he doubts it will hold her.

Days later, the search for a solution to Peter and Gamora’s predicament is temporarily suspended.

It had started as static crackling to life through the Third Quadrant’s radio, accompanied by a picture identifying the sender as Nebula. Gamora answered quickly, having not heard from her sister since Yondu’s funeral. Nebula doesn’t do social calls. Gamora knew something had gone wrong.

She was right.

The video feed on the comm channel shook so much it would give a lesser person motion sickness. Only snippets of Nebula’s face could be seen against a whirling, speeding background as she ran through a dilapidated structure, blaster fire zooming over her head. Despite the obvious danger on her end, Nebula’s message wasn’t so much a call for help, not even a fervent request for immediate assistance, as much as a swift status update on Nebula’s current mission and an unspoken suggestion that maybe it would be nice if the sisters caught up some time. If Gamora even came right now, Nebula would not be opposed to the company.

“Locking in on your coordinates, and Nebula?” Gamora pauses, “Stay safe.”

Her sister gives her a curt nod before clicking off the line.

 

* * *

 

The extraction is messy business.

“Remind me again _why_ we are saving Nebula?” Rocket shouts over the sounds of his oversized blasters.

“Don’t be a dick, Rocket!” Peter yells out before activating his mask, flying up to provide cover for the pint-sized menace.

“Yeah, I’m with the rat on this one!” Kraglin agrees, ducking behind a column. He bites the pin off a grenade and throws it into the thick of Sakaaran foot soldiers.

The resulting explosion rocks the already-ramshackle building, shaking through to the foundation, causing the support structure to buckle slightly.

Slicing through yet another enemy combatant, Gamora chastises him, “Don’t you start, too!”

“I didn’t ask for any of you to come!” Nebula barks out as she fights back-to-back with her sister.

“We put it to a vote, but Gamora overrode the results!” Drax reminds them, slashing through more paper people. This would be easier if there weren’t so many of them. “You did not respect the process!”  

“The process was flawed!” Gamora argues, dipping low to cut away at enemy knees.

Kraglin slides his long knife out of the sheath tied to his back. “The only flaw was you makin’ decisions on sentiment!” He joins them in carving his way through the crowd, chopping the arm off a Sakaaran aiming his blaster at Peter. “Yer suppose ta be the smart one!”

The building is old and unstable, even more so as a result of the battle. The entire structure heaves as support columns groan before collapsing. There are too many bodies, too much gunfire, and very little time to escape.

The Guardians fall back with Kraglin trailing, shooting soldiers pursuing his retreating compatriots.

When Kraglin steps too heavy, the already-overtaxed dry-rot boards snap. He falls through the floor in a cloud of dust and asbestos. Winded and coughing, Kraglin gingerly curls up into a sitting position. There’s a minute to go, maybe slightly less before he’s buried, but gazing through the hole above, he realizes with a certain morbid finality that he’s not going to make it out in time.

Something animalistic edging on fearful rages in his hindbrain, howling against his inevitable end, urging him to fight, to survive, but Kraglin is calm and still among the debris. The Guardians will have cleared out by now, unaware that he had fallen behind and through. When Pete realizes their reduced number, he will be upset, but he has his new team now to watch his back, to comfort him.  He doesn’t need the Ravagers anymore, doesn’t need Kraglin; he hasn’t for a while.

If this is how it ends… Kraglin can think of worse ways to go, and on the other side of it, maybe he’ll see that blue bastard again. He tried his best, and he hopes Yondu will understand.

At the very least, Pete is safe.

Peter jets down through the ceiling to Kraglin’s position.

_Fuck._

“Can you walk?” The idiot asks in a rush.

“The fuck ya doin’! Place is goin’ to fall!” Kraglin waves his arms towards the hole above them, pointing out the direction for the boy too stupid to find his way to safety.

“Then we gotta move!” Pete grabs Kraglin under his armpits and hoists him up, taxing his rocket thrusters, but they make it to the ground floor above. He quickly drags Kraglin through the last leg of the journey, practically carrying him, then throws him out before leaping clear of the building seconds before it collapses into rubble and dust.

They lay on the ground, exhausted and coughing. Peter turns to Kraglin, his face slack with relief and the ebbing of adrenaline. Kraglin glares back at Peter. _That asshole had no right._

Once back on the Quadrant, Kraglin confronts the idiot.

“Don’t ya ever fuckin’ do that again, Quill,” Kraglin says, pushing hard against Peter’s chest. The parallels were not lost on him. The boy had inexplicably inherited all of Yondu’s worst impulses but none of his sense to moderate it, to know when it was worth it.

“I saved your life!” Peter protests, bounding back into Kraglin’s face. His anger is more than a reactionary response to the other man’s ire. In that terrible moment, fear, guilt, and something else had whispered to him: _Not again_.

“You could’ve died!” Kraglin meets Peter’s eye, trying to impress upon him the gravity of the situation and pure stupidity he had displayed. It was sheer luck that they had made it out.

“But I didn’t. You didn’t. That why you’re mad? You got a death wish, old man?” _Not again._

“Yer not supposed ta die before me, idjit!”

“What?”

“I made Yondu a promise before he died. If ya go first… How can I face ‘im, knowin’ I failed him again?”

“Kraglin…”

“So if it ever comes down to you or me, Petey… It’s gotta be you who survives. Git it?” He’s no longer yelling, the fight drained from him.

_Never again._

Peter sighs. “After Yond… Dad died saving me, I just don’t think I can lose another one of you the same way.”

“I ain’t yer replacement daddy,” Kraglin scowls. Hell no. He’ll look after the brat, die for him too, but there’s no way he’s being saddled with that title. That’s where he draws a hard line.

“Course not. I already had one of those, and even though you guys were an item, that doesn’t make you my _stepdad_ or anything. You’re like… I don’t know? A much-older, much-smellier, much-less-attractive…” Kraglin’s expression darkens with every additional adjective. Peter continues undeterred, “…brother or that weird uncle at Thanksgiving who’s always telling war stories and shooting squirrels off his lawn? Point is, you’re family, too, but the kind you’re stuck with.”

“So, like regular family then?”

“Yeah… sure, Kraglin. You’re family, and family doesn’t just let each other die if it can be helped.”

Peter smiles at him then, and for the first time since Yondu’s death, that gnawingly-empty, hungry pit gnashing at Kraglin’s gut lessens just a bit.

“Just fuck already and be done with it,” Rocket barges through, pushing Kraglin into Peter on his way to mess hall. Kraglin springs back and each wear matching looks of disgust and horror. As if such a thing would even be possible given their shared history. They aren’t _that_ kind of family.

“Not what’s happening!” Peter exclaims.

“Yeah! Stop bein’ so disgustin’, rat!” Kraglin calls out. He never thought he’d find himself agreeing with the kid on anything, but then again, he never thought he’d declare Pete ‘Captain,’ either.

“I am Groot.”

“You’re right; the chemistry between those two is un-deniable,” Rocket comments to Groot.

“They _are_ close,” Mantis adds, antennae lightly bouncing. She has to touch them to be sure, but the bond doesn’t feel particularly sexual from where she sits.

“It’s revolting,” Nebula states. From her limited understanding, her sister’s loud idiot grew up with the scrawny idiot. They might as well be brothers.

“Peter, are you not in love with Gamora? Why would you aim to seduce such a crusty replacement?” Drax asks from his seat at the table.

“I’m not,” Peter protests.

“Then why did you spend so much time trying to bed her?” He continues, perplexed. Peter’s motivations and actions are always at odds with each other, it would seem. Unless…

“Oh God; Here we go.” Peter closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose when he sees Drax take in a deep breath in preparation for some long-winded, wrong-headed exposition.

“I am your friend, Peter Quill, but Gamora is also my friend. I would hope that you did not see her as another in your extensive line of conquests and have lost interest having now bedded her. Women are people, too, and it is not becoming of you to treat them as if they are disposable. If I had done the same with my Hovat, she would have sliced open my stomach and hung me by my entrails,” Drax says in a monotone voice. Considering the literal nature of his people, that is not a figurative expression.

“That sounds fair, I guess,” Peter responds.

“She was quite the fair-minded woman,” Drax agrees.

“No way I’d ever fuck Pete.” Kraglin makes his way toward the bowl of yaro root. He swipes one and takes a bite. It seems the Guardians have different culinary preferences compared to the Ravagers, whose diet tended towards the tinned and greyish-brown. Overall, the tuber is a bit too fresh for Kraglin’s tastes, but he’s never been particularly picky about food.

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best. You’d need all the shots after a night with him. Not a lot of shots, _all_ of them.” Rocket smirks in Peter’s direction.

“Says the raccoon. Your dates probably need to get rabies vaccinations after,” Peter shoots back.

“What the fuck did I tell you about calling me that?” Rocket launches himself at Peter.

Taking another bite of yaro, Kraglin calmly watches the two wrestle, Rocket demanding he take it back while Peter double-downs on his insults. Gamora enters the room, casually sidestepping the wriggling, grunting, cussing pile that is the dueling pair of idiots. Without saying anything, Kraglin tosses her a yaro root from the bowl, which she easily catches.

Kraglin would have never pictured such a scene nor anticipated how easily and seamlessly he would fit into it. It’s comfortable here, downright domestic. He wonders if this is what Yondu had hoped for when he asked him to look after Quill. Yondu wanted him to keep Peter alive, keep him safe, but perhaps he also wanted Kraglin to have something, too. Something intangible but real, something to keep him content and tethered to this life after Yondu’s death.

Kraglin stops mid-crunch, the yaro sweet and crisp on his tongue.

With his last act, Yondu had gifted him a family.

_That wily bastard._

 

* * *

 

Later that night, Kraglin tosses in bed; sleep still eluding him. Who would have thought having so much space to stretch out would be such a curse? When he hears someone clear their throat, he quickly sits up, fists clenched for a fight, but relaxes when he sees the identity of his late-night visitor. It’s Pete, standing at the foot of the bed with a pillow and an offer.

“Room for one more?”

“What’s this about, Pete?” The sooner he gets out, the sooner Kraglin can get back to not sleeping in peace.

“Nothing. I just remember back on the Eclector, Ravagers would sleep in piles where they drop, and when Yondu was gone on a mission or you guys had some lover’s spat, you used to curl up with the rest of us. Now that everyone’s gone… I just figured you’d like the company.”

“What ‘bout the Missus? Ain’t the two of ya sharin’ a bed now?” If Pete got himself in trouble with his woman, he’s on his own.

“Gamora is still learning how to share space,” Pete says, yawning and scratching the back of his head. Can’t Kraglin just move over already? It’s late, and he’s tired.

“She kick you out? Just ‘pologize an’ take yer licks. Easier that way.” Kraglin is not about to insert himself into that situation. It’s not like he’s… scared of Gamora, but she seems a stabby sort, and he enjoys having all his body parts intact.

“S’not that. She’s a light sleeper, and she sleeps with her knives nearby. Every time I shift in bed, I wake up to her holding the blade to my throat. Even if we put her knives and my blasters out of reach, she doesn’t need any weapons to be deadly. It’s terrifying.”

“I remember those days…” Kraglin says wistfully.

“How did you deal with it?”

“It gits less over time. They settle, but the instinct… it never really goes away. Ya just have to wait it out and pray they don’t stick ya too deep accidental-like before they come to their senses.” Kraglin shrugs.

“That sounds lovely and all. Real comforting. Can’t wait to weather that storm. But for now, I just need some shut eye, just a few hours, or I’ll fall asleep at the pilot’s console and end up killing us all. C’mon Kraglin, buddy, I’ll even let you pick: big spoon or little spoon,” Pete pleads.

Kraglin sighs and strokes the line of his closed eyes with his thumb and index finger. “All right, get over here before I change m’ mind. But no spoonin’.”

Peter settles next to Kraglin, folding himself into the blankets and the comforting childhood smell of leather and sour body odor. Due to their mutual exhaustion, both men drop off quickly into deep sleep, but unlike previous nights, Kraglin doesn’t wake up shivering, finding it easier to steal and maintain blanket cover when another person is tugging just as hard from the other side.

When Pete wakes up, his face damp with drool pooling on his pillow and a lanky body cradling him from behind, Gamora stands over them, carefully blank look on her face. Peter panics. This position, his history, his loose reputation… It’s not what it looks like, but all of it works against him in this moment.

“Before you say anything, it’s not a sex thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final ending scene is inspired by Write_Like_An_American’s amazing oneshot “Take Me Home, Country Road” (Trigger Warning for implied suicide). It's extremely depressing, and basically, after reading it, I just wanted Kraglin to be okay and for Peter to give him a damn hug (or vice versa).


End file.
